School (1938), and its sequels, in which the three Chantry sisters discover the problems
and pleasures of running their own stables, was one of the first of many ‘working’ pony
stories which proliferated in the 1950s with the arrival of careers books for girls.
Primrose Cumming, conscious of the limitations of the genre, wrote her last pony book
in 1969 and concentrated on girls’ picture books and comics for more than twenty
years.
The flood of pony stories was temporarily stemmed by the Second World War. Mary
Treadgold’s Carnegie Medal winner, We Couldn’t Leave Dinah (1941), an adventure story
rather than a pony book, was one of the very few books to acknowledge the war, with its
exciting story of children trapped on an occupied Channel Island. As peace broke out,
there was an astonishing resurgence of popularity in riding among children grown blasé
about the machine age. Once the pastime of the favoured few, riding became everybody’s
sport, and there were more and more children to enjoy it for the birth rate rose sharply
until 1947. There was an ever-increasing number of riding schools and more children
could afford their own ponies, particularly the native breeds which were cheap and easy
to keep. This interest was encouraged by the flourishing Pony Club and whetted by the
new phenomenon, television. In 1947, the BBC televised the Royal International Horse
Show at White City for the first time and soon Lieutenant-Colonel Harry Llewellyn, Pat
Smythe and their famous horses, Foxhunter, Prince Hal and Tosca, became household
names. Any book with ‘pony’ in the title would find thousands of eager readers and, in
the 1950s, a large number of indifferent pony stories were trotted out to meet the
growing demand.
Equestrian experts in horse-breeding and riding, like Pamela Macgregor-Morris, Lady
Kitty Ritson and Pat Smythe, and writers of adult books, like Catherine Cookson and
Monica Dickens, tried their hand at the genre with varying degrees of success. Kitty
Barne, better known for more serious children’s fiction, wrote a classic pony book,
Rosina Copper (1954), based on the true story of an Argentine polo pony. M.E. (Mary
Evelyn) Atkinson, author of the popular Lockett family holiday adventure books, and
Lorna Hill, who wrote the Sadler’s Wells series, both produced indifferent pony stories,
lured, perhaps, by the deceptive simplicity of the genre. However, young readers
preferred the Jill series, starting with Jill’s Gymkhana (1949), by Ruby Ferguson, most
of which are still in print. Regarded as trivial by the more serious minded, the books
about Jill, her ponies and her pals, have the jolly, hearty, middle-class tone more typical
of school stories and lack the didactic streak of the genre.
Many young riders felt a compulsion to write as well as ride and joined the growing
ranks of pony book authors. This large number of young writers is unique to the genre
and seems to be part of the pony-mad phase. Primrose Cumming and the Pullein-
Thompsons were not the only early starters. Among the youngest published writers were
Moyra Charlton, who was 11 when she wrote Tally Ho, the Story of an Irish Hunter (1930),
and Daphne Winstone, who wrote Flame (1945) when she was 12: others included April
Jaffe (14), who wrote Satin and Silk (1948), and the 15-year-olds Lindsay Campbell
(Horse of Air (1957) and Bernagh Brims (Runaway Riders (1963)). In 1936, 15-year-old
Shirley Faulkner-Horne wrote a book of instruction, Riding for Children, and schoolgirls
Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock, 15 and 16 respectively, sent the manuscript of a
book they were writing together to Arthur Ransome. With his encouragement, The Far-
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