Rowan, Jean

About the author

Jean Rowan was a pseudonym used by the author Jean Cantlie Stewart. She was a formidable character: in later life she drove her van, accompanied by her Springer spaniel, with such vigour that the pair were likened to Wallace and Gromit. She was born in Edinburgh, and was formidably intelligent. She always denied the charge that she was expelled from school for squirting a chamber maid with a water pistol, but however interrupted her education, she still managed to enter St Andrew’s University at the age of 16. After the war she married, but the marriage was brief, and to support herself and her son, she became a teacher, a lawyer and a writer.

Her books were a remarkably varied collection: as well as her pony story, she wrote The History and Practice of Law of Mines and Minerals, The Writing on the Blackboard (a report on the state of education), Sherry (the biography of her spaniel) and Why Devolution?

Finding the book
Reasonably easy to find.

Links and sources
Jean Cantlie Stewart, obituary, Herald Scotland, 26 October, 2009
Rowan Books – a site devoted to her books


Bibliography (pony books only)


Rufus, a New Forest Pony

Frederick Warne, London, 1967, 144 pp, illus Derek Eyles

Rufus the New Forest pony tells his own story: his early life running free in the forest, hiscapture and sale, the bad habit he develops through fear, and his good and bad timeswith different owners.