About the author
Julia Cotter’s Pony Thieves was written in the 1940s, and then read to her children, when she changed the names of the heroes to Clarissa, Jonathan (her children) and Caroline (her youngest sister). Her daughter Clarissa is one of the founders of Girls Gone By, famed for their re-issuing of hard to find children’s books, and GGB printed Pony Thieves.
It is a good read; though I feel it is really two books. The second half, where the pony Spree goes missing, is I think the better. It is an unsparing read; the first half is more conventional.
Julia Cotter died in 2008.
Finding the book
The book is readily available secondhand.
Links and sources
Girls Gone By’s page on Julia Cotter (no longer extant)
Bibliography
PONY THIEVES
Girls Gone By, Bath, 2003. Illus by the author
SHORT STORIES
Disaster on the Moor
Riding Magazine, March 1951, illustrated the author