seldom well off (which is why the children long hopelessly for ponies). Pony books are
obsessed with lack of money, not wealth, and with the care, riding and love of horses—
and these concerns are as relevant in the 1990s as they were in the 1940s.
Pony stories owe a good deal to traditional fairy tales with their stories of the
transformation of gauche girls and neglected ponies and the recurring pattern of motifs
and conventional events. They also bear a resemblance to the novel of ‘education’, the
bildungsroman, for the female hero gains confidence and a purpose in life by acquiring a
pony. Perhaps they are even closer to the formula love story-girl meets pony, girl loses
pony, girl gets pony—for these stories are about intense emotional relationships in
which the object of affection happens to be a pony. They are also books of instruction for
they are crammed with closely detailed information about buying and riding horses,
their tack, grooming and diet, as well as the specialised language of equitation.
This didactic streak has descended directly from the forerunners of the genre.
Although Black Beauty (1877) is generally regarded as the first in the field, there were
many moral books told from the animals’ point of view written earlier in the nineteenth
century (Avery 1965:38). One of the first was Memoirs of Dick, the little poney: supposed
to be written by himself; and published for the instruction and amusement of little masters
and mistresses, published in 1799. Dick’s story—he is stolen by gypsies and passed
between cruel and kind owners until he ends his days in a ‘fertile field’—was the pattern
for many autobiographical pony stories, which remained popular for a century and a
half.
The greatest of these, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, was intended for simple working
folk who had daily contact with horses ‘to induce kindness, sympathy, and an
understanding treatment of horses’ (Chitty 1971:187), but from the first was read
enthusiastically by children. Exciting, dramatic, with its strong, simple style, and
memorable characters, Black Beauty set a standard which future pony books found
hard to match, but its values and attitudes to animals still influence the genre. Anna
Sewell preached a new compassionate understanding between horse and owner, and
judged people on their treatment of animals, regardless of money or class.
For the next fifty years, pony stories tended to be labelled as nature-study books, like
Skewbald the New Forest Pony (1923), one of the publisher Black’s animal stories series
told from the animal’s point of view, sober books which concentrated on accurate
country lore rather than exciting plots. (Skewbald was written by Allen W.Seaby (1867–
1953), Professor of Fine Art at Reading University (1920–1933); he wrote a series of
stories about British native ponies, including Exmoor Lass (1928), Dinah the Dartmoor
Pony (1935), Sons of Skewbald (1937), Sheltie (1939), Mona the Welsh Pony (1948), and a
book on British Ponies (1936).) This reflected the growing interest in native breeds of
ponies as did the next pony classic, Moorland Mousie (1929). This realistic story of an
Exmoor pony was autobiographical, full of tips on horsemanship and horse
management and memorably illustrated by the great horse artist Lionel Edwards. It was
a direct imitation of Black Beauty, but was written specifically for children by ‘Golden
Gorse’, the pseudonym of Muriel Wace. The grand-daughter of a crown equerry to Queen
Victoria, Muriel Wace, like most of the pony story writers who followed her, was brought
up with ponies, and Mousie and Tinker Bell were based on real Exmoors.
TYPES AND GENRES 359