Mary Garland Bullivant

Jane Badger Books

Mary Garland Bullivant wrote under the name “Garland Bullivant”. She wrote two books, both beautifully illustrated: the first by Frank Hart and the second by Anne Bullen. They are both reasonably easy to find without their dustjackets, but much harder with. Little Lass is a good example of a pony biography: popular during the 1920s and 1930s, before it was superseded by stories focused on the rider.

Both Mary Garland Bullivant’s books were written before she was twenty. Mary Garland Bullivant is described on the dustjacket of the Country Life Junior Library edition as “a well-known rider in the West Country [and is] aged 15.” As with most of the very young pony book authors, she wrote stories of a pony’s life. Although some, like Primrose Cumming, Kathleen Herald (later K M Peyton) and the Pullein-Thompsons, carried on writing, most of these very young authors simply stopped once they were out of their teens.

Finding the books: both books are easy to find, and generally reasonably priced.

Little Lass
Country Life, 1936, illus Frank Hart
Reprinted 1936, as Country Life Library 1941
Set on Exmoor, but not about Exmoors, this is the story of the pony Lassie. She has the usual ups and downs common to this type of story: good masters and bad, a slide down into poorer and rougher homes, and at the end, a reunion with Teddy, her first master.

Fortune’s Foal
Country Life, 1938, illus Anne Bullen
Fortune’s Foal is a foal the heroine of the book, Anne falls for. Some years later her uncle says he will buy her a horse, and there at the sale, is the foal (now grown, obviously). The foal has not had an easy time of it, and the rest of the book deals with Anne’s attempts to learn how to manage her pony: in the end she rides her in a point-to-point.

Thanks to Sue Howes for the information on the content.

Bibliography