Bianco, Margery Williams

About the author

Margery Williams Bianco (1881–1944) is best known as the author of The Velveteen Rabbit. She was born in London, and was encouraged by her father to use her imagination, and to read. After her father died when she was seven, the family moved to America, and after a year in New York, moved to rural Pennsylvania. At the age of 19, she returned to London, where she wrote her first children’s books. She had far more success with these than with adult novels.

After World War I, she returned to America, now married and with a family. The first book she published in America was her classic The Velveteen Rabbit. She continued to write, often returning to the theme of The Velveteen Rabbit, in which toys come to life. Included here is her The Skin Horse, in which a hospitalised girl and a skin horse become friends.

Finding the book
Reasonably easy to find in the original and the reprint versions.

Links and sources
Wikipedia on Margery Williams Bianco


Bibliography (horse books only)


The Skin Horse

George H Doran Company, New York, 1927, 41 pp, illus Pamela Bianco
Green Tiger Press, La Jolla, California, 1974, 45 pp, illus Pamela Bianco

The old skin horse is sent off to the Children’s Hospital. There he meets a girl who falls in love with him. Together they plan for their future.