Hughes, Janet Herron

About the author

Janet Herron Hughes was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved to Washington DC when she was eleven. While she was at the fashionable Miss Madeira’s School for Girls, she persuaded her parents to let her spend weekends and holidays in the country with a friend, where they looked after the horses, and hunted. She began a diary when she was young, full of stories about the horses and hunts she knew, many of which she used for the hunting episodes in The Frosty Filly. As far as I know, this is the only book she wrote.

She married and had four children, and settled on a farm near Baltimore, Maryland, where as well as writing, she painted portraits, having attended the Cocoran Art School.

Finding the book
Frosty Filly had no UK publication. A very good first, not ex library, might be expensive, but reasonably priced ex-lib copies can be found.

Links and sources
Dustjacket of The Frosty Filly
Many thanks to Susan Bourgeau for all her help with the picture and information on the author and the book’s contents.


Bibliography (horse books only)


The Frosty Filly

C S Hammond & Co, New Jersey, 1961, illus Charles J Mazoujian

Frances D’Affrey is an orphaned English girl, who disguises herself as a boy when she runs away from her stiff aunt. She’s looking for a friend of her father’s, whom she knows only as “Dinky”, but her father said once “If anything happensto me, Dinky will take care of  you. He has the best pack of fox hounds in America.”  She finds work at a Virginian stables because she thinks it’s most
likely to bring her into contact with Dinky and because it’s work she can do.