dimensional characters and their physical appearance and personality are described in
great detail.
Pony stories, like other types of formulaic fiction—school stories, westerns, and
romances—have certain narrative conventions. The following sequence of situations can
be found in almost all formulaic pony books: a young girl, lacking in confidence and self
esteem, longs for a pony but cannot afford one; she finds a special pony, longs to own it,
and acquires it by chance or by saving money; she discovers the economic problems of
keeping a pony, learns to ride, school and look after it properly and, in the process,
gains confidence and a skill; something threatens the status quo, often lack of money,
and it seems the girl may lose the pony; however, in the end, she rides it to success in a
show.
The books contain detailed advice on horsemanship and riding and also come
complete with a set of situations, values and assumptions: the setting is British and
rural—the female hero and her family have often moved to the country from the town;
country life is ‘better’ than city life; the heroine’s family is short of money, or has lost
money, and her parents are often in ‘artistic’ jobs—writers, artists, and potters. There is
a strong code of behaviour attached to horses and horse riding which mirrors the
traditional English code of fair play, sportsmanship and good manners.
Books like A Pony for Jean (Joanna Cannan 1936), Wish for a Pony (Monica Edwards
1947) A Pony of Our Own (Patricia Leitch 1960), Dream of Fair Horses (Leitch 1975),
Jackie Won a Pony (Judith M. Berrisford 1958), A Pony in the Family, (Berrisford 1959)
Jill’s Gymkhana (Ruby Ferguson 1949), Fly-by-Night (K.M.Peyton 1968) and For Love of a
Horse (Leitch 1976) though written over a period of forty years and quite different in
tone and quality, are all formula stories. There is also a vast amount of literature which
though not adhering to that rigid formula can still be classified as pony books; books
which describe children with ponies of their own, running or helping at riding stables,
pony trekking, rescuing ponies, and taking part in other pony-centred adventures. Very
often a series of books about a particular girl rider starts with the formula novel then
progresses to less pony-centred stories, such as Monica Edwards’s Romney Marsh and
Punchbowl books.
It is hardly surprising that the genre has been frequently criticised as narrow, middle
class and unchanging: Elaine Moss observed that ‘Horse and pony books ...tend to be
thought of by trendy journalists as middle-class, static, irrelevant to today’s social
pattern’ (Moss 1976:30). Marcus Crouch complained: ‘Pony stories were from the
beginning middle-class. Young riders owned their ponies by unchallenged right; there
was no vulgar show of money, and Pony Club subscriptions were paid by some unseen
and disembodied daddy’ (Crouch 1972: 152). Margery Fisher promotes the pony story to
‘the upper-middle-class’ and points out the problem of updating the genre: ‘When the
Great House has become a home for backward children, it is not easy to write of it
unselfconsiously, as if at the present time, with Cook in residence, and yet it is too soon
for this kind of story to become a period piece. The arbitrary addition of topical detail
hardly helps’ (Fisher 1961:312). Yet the pony story succeeds in what it sets out to do
and remains popular because it stays within the small, highly specialised society of
horse lovers. Although the world of horses is perceived as upper class and privileged, the
families in these stories are not always middle class—less so in recent books—and
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