About the author
Mrs Peter Wait is something of a mystery figure: The Wanted Man is the only book she wrote under that name. She’s the only pony book author I know who published under her husband’s name rather than her own, which is something of a puzzle. I do wonder why. Was it a desire for anonymity (at least partial)? Were there some very hard and fast notions about what was proper? There’s no biographical information about her in her book: a woman of mystery.
The Wanted Man is far more adventure story than it is pony. Most of the book is concerned with tracking down the wanted man of the title.
Finding the book
Rare as hens’ teeth. Took me years to track one down.
Links and sources
The illustrator, Mary Gernat, has her own page on my website.
Bibliography
The Wanted Man
Methuen & Co Ltd, London, 1956, 146 pp, illus Mary Gernat
A rather lightweight adventure story, featuring a large family who are more or less differentiated. There’s a hunt at the beginning, in which one of the family loses a pony she borrowed. They don’t dash straight out to look for it, but hang about until the next day, which I found a little surprising. The whole story is based around a wanted poster which looks a lot like their neighbour’s butler. It’s all mixed up with one of those wartime villages which was evacuated for troop movements, and it’s told in a rather breathless style.
