Monica Edwards - a Personal Appreciation

[jacey]

sartorias  recently did a Book View Cafe blog on what kids like, and what was the first book that made you into a reader? and having thought about it for... oooh... minutes, I realised that the standout author from my early years of independent reading was Monica Edwards (1912 - 1998).

From my earliest days of graduating from picture books to 'chapter books' I gravitated towards (mainly) pony stories. I read them indiscriminately, working my way through the local library's supply of books by the likes of Ruby Ferguson, Judith M Berrisford or the Pullein-Thompson sisters. Mostly they were about English girls with ponies having improbable but exciting adventures and winning gymkhanas. Occasionally they might have the horses as central characters (such as Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby books). Always they had equines. (How I got into Narnia stories via The Horse and His Boy is maybe too obvious to tell.)

But the books I came back to time and time again were by Monica Edwards.

By some random chance (thanks, Mum), ‘Wish for a Pony’ by Monica Edwards was in my Christmas stocking when I was eight. Yes it was a pony book, but it was so much more besides and it instantly broadened my horizons. It introduced me to multi-layered characters who felt like friends. Characters who had a continuing life even when I wasn't opening my book as a window on their world.

Monica Edwards wrote two series of children's books, one set in Romney Marsh and based on the fictional village of Westling where her main heroine, Tamzin Grey, is the vicar's daughter. Westling is recognisably Rye Harbour in Sussex where Monica (Newton) grew up, the daughter of the vicar. Monica's other series is set on and around Punchbowl Farm  in Surrey, a fictionalised version of the farmhouse which she and her husband Bill Edwards bought in the 1930s. The two series are interconnected with characters from one appearing in the other occasionally. My personal favourites are the Romney Marsh books, and I've managed to collect the whole set over the years, finding titles that I recalled reading from the library but never owned.

I don't honestly know how I would judge them against today's crop of children's books if I came to them fresh, but they stand up well to re-reading even though they are from a much more innocent time.

Wish for a Pony instantly became my favourite book, to be read and re-read. It's the first Romney Marsh book and introduces Tamzin Grey and her best friend Rissa Birnie, two likeable main characters. It also includes a richly populated geographical background, detailed and ‘real’ with interesting grown up characters, too. She drew on characters from Rye Harbour to populate her books. Who can say whether they were real individuals or amalgams of local characters. Apart from Tamzin's ever present but not overbearing parents, and her little brother, Diccon, (whose age unfortunately shifts part way through the series) recurring characters include Old Jim Decks the rogueish but intrinsically good ferryman, and Old Jim’s son, Young Jim and the slightly sinister Hookey Galley who is always Up To No Good. Even the minor characters, like Butterbeans Pope who is always hanging around the harbour mast, the inappropriately named Lillycrop children, and the curmudgeonly grocer, Smiling Morn, are all succinctly drawn. Yes there are horses, and yes, Tamzin's wish for a pony does come true, though not via the obvious route.

The second book, Summer of the Great Secret, sees Tamzin and Rissa trying to reform Old Jim Decks when he is suspected of smuggling - a recurring theme and a semi-respectable profession for a Sussex fisherman when it involved brandy from Fance rather than boatloads of narcotics (Dr-Syn-for-kids?). In the third book two boy characters duly arrive, Rissa’s cousin Roger and his piratical and dashing young friend, Meryon Fairbrass, and the four children become the core cast for the rest of the series which includes stories of the local farm struggling through a foot-and-mouth epidemic, or fake ‘hauntings’ to scare off developers, or of rescuing seabirds from an oil-slick or saving a dolphin from exploitation. The ponies are ever present, but not always the focus. Rissa eventually gets her own pony, but the boys have their own interests. Meryon, despite a swashbuckling pirate ancestor, always aspires to a career in medicine.

It says a lot for the impression these books left on me that I can write this now without referring to the volumes on my bookshelves. The characters lived for me then and still live for me now. I remember them not just as paper characters, but as friends I once knew well and still remember with fondness. I grew up with Tamzin, Rissa, Meryon and Roger – absurdly delighted when, as they grew up, Tamzin and Meryon ended up with an ‘understanding'.

Monica Edwards writing was never flashy, but it had an intense quality of realism, albeit not gritty as is currently the fashion. Her characters still faced physical trials and moral dilemmas and saved the day by extreme courage, steadfast loyalty to each other and intelligent reasoning. She was thoroughly grounded in the geography and history of her specific locations, never more upfront than when she wrote Storm Ahead, which featured a lifeboat disaster based on the loss of the Mary Stanford of Rye in 1928 when the whole of the seventeen man crew of the Mary Stanford Lifeboat drowned. Monica (age 16) was witness as the lifeboat capsized while coming into harbour, and it was her father who officiated at the mass funeral for the seventeen drowned sailors. Rooted in fact and bitter experience, Monica's writing was never more realistic than when describing that storm and its consequences with chilling intensity.

I recently read the  The Monica Edwards Romney Marsh Companion by Brian Parks and was interested to find out that Meryon was based on a boy she knew in real life. When I discovered that he died while at Oxford University, I was gutted. It was as if one of my favourite childhood characters had been killed off without fulfilling his potential of growing up to be a doctor and marrying his Tamzin. Those characters grabbed me so much as a child that over four deecades later I still care.

It  behooves us as writers to understand that the very best books are about people who feel real. A good book is a combination of plot, characterisation and style, but just as architects will debate whether form follows function or function follows form, readers will debate the relative importance of the three major criteria. For me, there's no contest. Without great characterisation a book doesn't live. Tamzin, Rissa, Meryon and Roger never stopped living when I closed my book and they're still living now.

Thank you. Monica Edwards.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I agree with every word of this, though I am fonder of some of the later books than Wish for a Pony to which I came too to late - and far too late for No Mistaking Corker, but I digress.

There was a very acute observation by one critical work I read; it pointed out that it was one of the most difficult things in writing to make a truly good person interesting, and Edwards succeeded in doing this with Tamzin. I agree entirely - and have always preferred the Romney Marsh characters, though I really do think Meryon is too good to be true for my personal taste.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Meryon is too good to be true, I agree, but he also has a sense of humour which, I think, redeems him. He is also quite pig-headed and fairly un-Meryonish in 'A Wind is Blowing'. It's obvious that ME really fancied him and reading her biog she seems to have been pretty devastated by his death. There's no inklng of who he was - I guess they want to protect the family's privacy which is fair enough.

I banged on about Wish for a Pony because it was the first one, and my first introduction to the series, but I do prefer some of the others. I'd be hard pressed to say which was my favourite, though No Going Back would be very near the top of my list. I also really like The Nightbird, though I only have the Armada paperback which is an abridged text.

I'd love to see the difference between the abridged and the original. I presume the abridgement was just for word count. I hardly think it clould be for content.

Tamzin is certainly a-good-person-made-interesting, but part of her appeal is that she doesn't think of herself as a good person and often takes time out to examine her motives for doing things, especially with regard to protecting Jim Decks in his various nefarious activities, even when she knows he's breaking the law. She has her own moral compass and the law always comes second to her loyalty to friends.

Have you seen the prices some of the volumes are going for on Amazon these days. I feel like putting a note into the books in my collection should my kids ever clear out my house when I'm gone.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I believe Meryon's 'real' identity is actually known - I'm sure I was discussing it somewhere on LJ with someone where they mentioned his real name.

The prices, the prices! I was looking to replace my very tatty paperback of Cargo of Horses and the first one I saw was going for over £150, and that was at a book fair! I am still looking. Missed one a few weeks ago by a whisker.

I have bought-at-the-time editions of The Outsider, The Wild One and A Wind is Blowing and I, also, cannot believe the prices they are listed at, both in the book shops and on Amazon or e-Bay.

I have taken several fans on tours of the Rye Port area (and, oddly enough, my OS map for A-level geography covered it), though we generally insist on Winchelsea first. I love that town. On a summer's day it feels like something out of an episode of The Avengers in its Steed/Peel heyday.

Book prices

[morphlet.livejournal.com]

I know what you are saying. I've been looking to replace my Pullein-Thomson and Monica Dickens childhood books and £20+ for a tatty paperback no thank you.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Very interesting, thanks. I don't immediately recognise any of these titles, so I'm not sure whether I read any of them or not. If our library had them, I must have done though.

You post was very timely because I've just signed up to do the OU's Children's Literature course and I'm re-reading some old favourites in prepration.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure, since we're not vastly apart in age, that they would have been around in your childhood years, but they never attained the recognition of (say) Enid Blyton's 'Adventure' series or Arthur Ransome. They were published between 1947 and 1969 and though they've been reprinted several times I don't think they were constantly in print. First edition copies of some title are priced at around £300 on Amazon, so they must be pretty rare.


I'd be really interested to see your OU course reading list and a synopsis of what it covers. I'd expect to be familiar with everything published up to the late 70s, but less familiar with the output from last 30 years, except perhaps in the fantasy department.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I could never find her books in sequence, which I was always sorry about. And I don't think I owned any. I loved those I could find and always rather yearned for more. She was indeed a fine writer.
My ur-pony books were the Silver Brumbies, though. I still think about them and their magical hints.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

The Silver Brumby books are brilliant. I used to love them and still have four or five. I was really disappointed when I saw photos of real brumbies because they were slightly scrawny and not a bit like I imagined.

Re the Monica Edwards books. I don't think reading order is crucial, though starting off with 'Wish for a Pony' gives a good introduction. It was years before I found 'The Midnight Horse', in which Meryon and Roger appear for the first time. It eventually turned up reprinted (and possibly abridged) in an anthology called 'Three Great Pony Stories.'

I would group the series into three: a) the first two with only Tamzin and Rissa, b) the middle batch up to but not including 'No Going Back' and then c) 'No Going Back' to 'A Wind is Blowing,' - the latter being fairly untypical because it takes Tamzin and Meryon away from the Marsh for part of the book and has much higher stakes than all the others.

From 'No Going Back' onwards they are no longer children, but in that rather awkward transitioning teen phase with Tamzin and Meryon definitely in an understanding, but such a chaste one that it's almost undetectable, though absolutely unshakeable. It just _IS_. Books written for and about kids of 14 or 16+ nowadays are so much more advanced sexually and have all the he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not thing going on. You just know with Tamzin and Meryon that it's always been like that - it's just now that they are saying it. Apart from Tamzin being scared that the relationship between the four of them will change if she and Meryon become a couple, and being afraid that 14 is too young for that kind of thing, the whole thing runs smoothly with no histrionic teen angst. Very refreshing.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I liked Patricia Leitch's Jinny books. There was often a supernatural/archaeological twist, which these days often makes me wince, but I loved the writing.

I thought I remembered Monica Edwards, then realised that I was thinking of Monica Dickens. I liked her World's End series, though you'd think that even then the parents that abandoned their kids to sail around the world would be jailed and their kids nabbed by the social, rather than left alone to found a commune/menagerie...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I read Patricia Leitch and Monica Dickens as well, but mostly from the library, so (apart from one Monica Dickens) I don't actually own any and therefore they've slipped out of memory.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

What's really frustrating is that one of my friends knew Patricia Leitch through the local Pony Club and was always promising an introduction. It was never forthcoming, which was a shame, because I think that Patricia Leitch was one of my earliest inspirations as far as writing was concerned.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Ah, I just googled Patricia Leitch and realised why Jinny didn't ring a bell. They weren't published until after my mad pony book phase was over. I'm obviously older than you. I read some of her earlier ones. Rosette for Royal rings a bell (1963). It's likely I bought some of the early Ginny books for the library where I worked until 1978, but without reading them all the way through, I guess. So many books, so little time....

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I haven't come across any of the earlier ones...

I remember reading a lot of Elyne Mitchell, too. I was a big fan of Thowra!

Anyone recognise this pony book from this cover description?

[morphlet.livejournal.com]

In paperback it was in colour and was a direct crib from a photograph of Pat Smythe jumping a grey mare called Leonora over a Road Closed gate.
I think the story was about a girl who had gone to live with four pony owning cousins.

I read so many I can hardly remember the stories.

Re: Anyone recognise this pony book from this cover description?

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Sadly I read so many, too, and from the description that could be any one of hundreds.

Monica Edwards

[christinalacey.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you how much I appreciated your appreciation of the Romney Marsh and Punchbowl stories. I too read all the other pony books on offer (Primrose Cummings anyone?) but Monica Edwards, with the lightest possible touch, created a world to which I aspired more than anything else...and I think it's had some effect on pretty well everything I've done since. It was a 'different country' , but my daughter ..now 35..equally gobbled the books up and is trying to give her children that sort of outside, adventurous, thoughtful, unselfish life.

Alas I was made uneasy by the growing 'understanding' between Tamzin and Meryon, and felt in my bones for Rissa until sensible Dion drew her into life on the farm...and although it seemed a bit like tying up loose ends, I was happy to believe in Lindsey and Roger's less dramatic romance.she playing her flute and he building wireless sets..

I still read them from time to time, and have most of them in hardback..Christmas and birthday presents..and you're absolutely right, the people all do still live. I remember reading ME's obituary and still regret not having written to her while I had the chance....I didn;t write to Terry Pratchett either.

Re: Monica Edwards

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

It's lovely to meet another Monica Edwards fan. I was much more a fan of Romney Marsh rather than the Punchbowl series, though I always liked the crossovers.

I liked the 'understanding' between Tamzin and Meryon. I think I was just the right age when No Going Back was published. I might have been just a teeny bit in love with Meryon myself. Well - what's not to like?

I confess that in my upcoming fantasy 'Winterwood' (due from DAW in Feb 2016) that I semi-stole a character from Westling. It's set in 1800, and I have a barely reformed pirate called Hookey Garrity, though in truth his character is more like I imagine Jim Decks might have been in his younger days.

PS, I sill have a copy of Primrose Cumming's Silver Sanffles, which I thought was a magical book when I was a child.

Monica Edwards books

[fiona williams (from livejournal.com)]

I hadn't run across your blog before, although I have seen some of your reviews on Goodreads. I'm also a lifelong Monica Edwards fan. My first book of hers was an Armada edition of No Entry, which I still have. It was the only one I owned as a child, although I borrowed some from our local library. I am not in the U.K., and they didn't have that many in a small town Canadian library.

In recent years, I have been working on building up quite a decent collection of old pony books, and other childhood favourites. Owing to the astronomical prices, I elected not to collect the Monica Edwards hardcovers, but have instead been buying the Girls Gone By editions as they were published. These are replacing a mixed bag of tatty hardcovers with no dust jackets and abridged paperback editions. They of course have the full original text and illustrations, along with a few extras. They've published twenty so far, with the twenty-first (The White Riders) coming out in a couple of days. I also have the Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Companion books. My other pony books, such as those by Ruby Ferguson, Gillian Baxter and the PT sisters, are all hardcovers with dust jackets, and Monica Edwards is one of only two authors that I elected to collect in paperback.

I believe someone was wondering about the copy of The Midnight Horse that is in Three Great Pony Stories, and if it has been abridged. As far as I can tell, the text is original, although I'm not quite sure if all the Anne Bullen illustrations are there. In any event, I find it far preferable to the revised Goodchild publication done in the 1980s. Abridgments and "updates" are one of my pet hates, and I've been known to trumpet long and loud about them on various pony book groups.

Anyways, very interesting article and thank you for it.

Re: Monica Edwards books

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Hi, Fiona, Thanks for the reminder to check Girls Gone By. Last time I looked all of their Romney Marsh stories were out of print. I have most of them in hardback already. Some are ex library editions and some, I think, are abridged editions rather than the full original text. I acquired quite a few as a child and collected the others in the 1970s and 1980s, but I only have The Midnight Horse as part of the Three Great Pony Stories collection. I've never been able to find an original copy.Oddly enough The White Riders has proved to be one of the easiest to collect. I've ended up with a couple of paperback copies and a recently acquired hardback one. NOTE: I just checked the Girls Gone By Website. The White Riders shows up as an upcoming publication, but you'd miss it if you went to the Monica Edwards page as it's not listed on there at all. In these days of print-on-demand and ebooks, it's a pity that they can't keep all their back catalogue available.