Adult horse and pony books

A while back I started to wonder if there were many horse and pony books specifically written for adults. I knew of those by Joyce Stranger and K. M. Peyton and a couple by Dorian Williams and of course the racing crime thrillers by Dick Francis and company...but were there more? Well, a few months later, after both discussing this on the ponymadbooklovers forum and doing a bit of research, I have found that, although the publishing world is not bursting at the seams with adult horse novels, there are a fair amount of books out there.

What is surprising is that a) They are mostly written by American writers and b) a large proportion of them are romance.

Why should that be? Well, with the American angle, I think it has always been true that the American horse book scene is more wide-ranging than that of the UK, not really concentrating on the young girl/pony club element around which the British pony book centres. It has always had a wider frame, with more male central characters, more older characters and is more eclectic in theme. It also seems to concentrate a lot more on racing than the UK books and it is probably this disclipline which attracts a more adult theme (in fact a large proportion of the UK adult horse books are set in the world of racing too). It is not surprisingly therefore that the horse book in America should spill over into the adult market.

As for romance, I'm not sure as to that at all? Anybody who has a theory let me know!

But apart from the crime thrillers, romances and racing stories there is a lot more on offer, from fantasy by the likes of Judith Tarr (she even wrote a book where a sorcerer transforms a man into an Arabian stallion...now wouldn't you like to be able to do that yourself!), historical works, mysteries and much more.

If you would like to see my list of adult horse related fiction please visit the new page on my website here I have also included a number of books which were originally aimed at older children but are particularly suitable for the more mature reader. I hope it will give you some new ideas for reading material...it certainly has done so for me. And if you know of any other adult horse fiction you think should be added to the list please let me know or visit the adult pony book thread on the forum.

Just got a few more titles (thanks to all who provided them) which I haven't had time to add to the website yet:

Ride a Proud Horse by Barbara Morgenroth

Bold Venture (UK title Bluebird) by Dorothy V.S. Jackson

Ins and Outs by Barbara Moss

Ride a Dark Horse by Lynn Hall (older teenager)

To search for the any of the books on Amazon you can use this link:

Pony Mad & Precocious

We have been talking about the ages of pony book authors in a couple of threads on the ponymadbooklovers forum and what really struck me is that there seems to be a trend amongst the writers of these books to start very young. Some of the authors who wrote their first pony book when only teenagers include:

K. M .Peyton - 15 when she wrote Sabre The Horse From the Sea (under the name of Kathleen Herald) and still a teenager when she penned her second novel The Mandrake.

Moyra Charlton - amazingly only around 11 or 12 when she wrote her first book Tally Ho.

Primrose Cumming - a teenager when she wrote Doney

Sheila Chapman - wrote all of her four books when very young.

Gillian Baxter - a teenager when she penned what is probably still her best-loved book Jump For the Stars

Avrill Knott - wrote Pony of Gold when she was 15

The Pullein-Thompson sisters - teenagers when they collaborated on their first book Picotee

Granted, some of these early efforts did not scale the heights of timeless prose, however one or two were amazingly mature works. In particular, I would highlight K. M. Peyton's second novel The Mandrake: it is hard to reconcile the maturity and skill of this book with the actual age of its author.

It is difficult to come up with a reason for this precocity. One suggestion is that children matured more quickly then. But if we examine the ages of some of the non-pony female authors of the same period, such as Enid Blyton, E. M. Brent-Dyer, Noel Streatfield, Richmal Crompton and Lorna Hill, we find that all of these authors were in their 20s to 40s when they began writing novels. It does in fact seem a trend amongst horsy rather than general authors.

Does the responsibility of looking after a pony and the discipline of learning to ride make a child grow up more quickly? This however would not account for the early talents of K. M. Peyton who did not actually have a horse before she wrote her first books.

Did the horsy set move in more upper class circles in which some sort of 'old boy's network' would enable the young author to take a fast track into publishing. This could of course account for the P-T sisters who came from an extremely literary circle and whose acquaintances would of course have included publishers, but once again it would not account for others such as K. M. Peyton who came from ordinary working class backgrounds.

Perhaps there is some mysterious link between loving ponies and wanting to write about them. Do horses inspire a lyricism, a desire to share one's love of them with others via the written word? I'm sure I am not the only one who, as a teenager, wrote pony stories or even a book. (My own effort has (perhaps mercifully) been lost somewhere in the seemingly endless clutter of childhood detritus. But was I feeling the same urge to write as my authoress heroines?

It would be nice to come up with a theory to neatly explain the precocity (and if anyone has any suggestions please let me know!) However, whatever the reason, let us be grateful that our favourite authors did not consign their early works to a dusty attic along with their old dolls and teddies, but allowed the rest of us to share their youthful writings.

Christmas...not so bad after all?

I am not really a Christmassy person. I used to quite like it when it meant escaping work for a couple of weeks, but even that bonus is missing now that I am self-employed.

Everything about it seems to have become an irritation, from the hideously cheerful Christmas songs that begin playing everywhere from October onwards, to the desperate grubbing around trying to find a present more interesting than the usual socks, to the yearly search for the Christmas tree and decorations which never seem to be in the place you remember putting them, to the endless trailing round visiting relatives whom though you only see once a year, its still once a year too much. It's enough to have you reaching for the brandy instead of putting it in the Christmas cake! And then of course there is the orgy of eating and drinking leaving you feeling full of guilt and indigestion as a year's dieting is blown in a week.

But before you are sending me the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, I do have some nice words to say about Christmas. Well, one, really. Books.

Santa has thankfully ignored the fact I have not been a good little girl and brought me a bumper crop of pony books which I have been looking for to add to my collection. These include Gillian Baxter's Bargain Horses, K. M. Peyton's The Sound of Distant Cheering and The Grey Ghost by Carolyn Henderson, none of which I have read before. But the best of all by far are a pair of books whose arrival has almost made me want to start singing Jingle Bells and wearing a pair of furry antlers on my head.

These are a first edition of Sabre The Horse From the Sea by Kathleen Herald (aka K. M. Peyton) and also by her a 1950s edition of The Mandrake a Pony.

So pass the After Eight Mints and turkey sandwiches round one more time, turn up the volume on that Christmas Compilation CD, I don't care. I will have my head buried in one of these beauties.

Maybe Christmas isn't so bad after all...