Author: Jane Badger
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The 1960s and the pony paperback
The 1950s had seen more pony books published than any other decade, but the 1960s were not far behind. It was in the 1960s the paperback pony book really came into its own, after a rather slow start with Puffin Books, the children’s line of Penguin. Puffin printed Joanna Cannan’s Shetland pony story Hamish in 1944, as…
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The 1950s gallop on
Were you to analyse how many pony books have been published over the last decades, and when, the 1950s come out on top. Geoffrey Trease said “In those days you could have sold Richard III if you had given it the right wrapper and called it A Pony for Richard.” This is unfortunately true. Out…
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The Flood: Pony Book series in the 1950s
The 1950s saw a massive increase in the number of pony books published. The war was over; rationing was coming to an end. We had never had it so good, so Harold Macmillan said. The welfare state was becoming established, employment was high. The 1950s pony book reflected the spirit of optimism of the age:…
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Pony books in the 1940s
After Joanna Cannan introduced her heroine Jean to the world in A Pony for Jean (1936), she opened the gate to a fresh wave of stories. Ann Stafford wrote a fine holiday adventure in Five Proud Riders (1937), with young authors Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock contributing decent examples of ponies and holidays in their Oxus series in the late 1930s (The Far-Distant Oxus, 1937, Escape…
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The pony book – how it all began
Animals, animals Animal books there were in plenty in the 1800s, all of them animals telling their own story. There were cats, dogs, the occasional pony, and donkeys, and then in 1877 came Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. Black Beauty told the world what it was like to be a working horse in Victorian Britain. It was…
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Did men write pony books?
This post originally appeared on my old blog. I had completely forgotten I had written it until I was searching for information on Antonio Fachiri. I read it, and thought, oh, that’s not too bad, is it? So here it is again. Recently I’ve been thinking about male authors who write horse and pony books…
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The stables of Lamport Hall
2023 wasn’t the best year I’ve had for visiting stables, or writing about them. This piece I’ve had brimming away since 2022, but here it is at last. Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire is now run by the Lamport Hall Preservation Trust, and it’s very well worth visiting. The house itself is beautiful, as are the…
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K M Peyton: the girls, the horses, the passion
K M Peyton, MBE, died this week at the age of 94. She won the Carnegie medal for The Edge of the Cloud, and in over forty horse books, captured completely that passionate obsession girls have for the horse. Her characters were Romans, Victorians, Edwardians and thoroughly modern day. What they shared was a clear-sighted…
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The pony book gift guide 2023
What do you get the pony book fan in your life, when you want to focus on independent authors and makers? Here are some ideas. Cressida Burton First up is the Ravensbay School series by Cressida Burton. The books are set at a boarding school with riding on the curriculum, and it’s a brilliant choice…
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How to put off getting back on a horse
I could do a solid hundred pages on how I put off getting back to riding again, because I have a fertile brain and I put it to good use finding excuse after excuse after excuse for why I wasn’t riding again. I knew the real reason I didn’t was because I was scared stiff,…