Jessica Jahiel's HORSE-SENSE Newsletter Archives

Searching for horse book from childhood

From: Sarah

Hi Jessica,This question is a long shot, but maybe you can help. I have been searching for the name and author of books I read as a child that left a lasting imprint- and have corresponded with librarians in Britain to no avail. Someone must know, because these stories were so great.

It was a series of three books, possibly 150 or so pages in each,and they were written by two British school girls about children on summer holiday in Dartmoor, three siblings and a mysterious boy named Maurice, they all had ponies they rode everywhere and I remember the smallest child had an Exmoor pony and the older sister rode a pony named Talisman. The stories were each a summer full of pony adventures and were very well told.

A nice British lady loaned them to us,they had been her favorite books as well. I think they must have been written in the fifties, maybe a bit earlier. I thought one was titled The Far Distant Oxer, but maybe that was just the name of a chapter I remember. I am sure my children would enjoy them today and I would be so happy to find them again. I enjoy your site and if I dont hear from you on this one I will understand! Thanks for your time! Sarah

Hi Sarah! You're in luck, those were some of my favourite books, too. There were three in the series. Your memory is better than you thought - the first one was called "The Far-Distant Oxus"! The second was "Escape to Persia", and the third was "Oxus in Summer". They were published in the late 1930s, and the authors were, as you remember, two teenaged girls who were at school together. Katharine Hull was just 15 and Pamela Whitlock 16 when they wrote "The Far-Distant Oxus".

These were wonderful "pony stories". Now, good luck finding them - it's taken me years just to find the first two, and I'm still looking for a copy of "Oxus in Summer".

Jessica

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