“Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy.”

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
London : Longmans, 1932

Flora Poste is a plucky nineteen-year old London orphan. She goes to stay with her Aunt Ada Doom (yes, really) in gloomy rural England. With her modern thinking and common sense, she attempts to fix all of the inhabitants of the farm who, in the tradition of Victorian agricultural literature, are somewhat backwards thinking and labouring with emotional issues.

Written in the early 1930s, this book is hysterically funny and warmly comforting.