Jane Badger Books

Anne Bullen

Depending on the world  you inhabit, Anne Bullen (1913-1963) will be known to you either as an illustrator of pony books, or as the co-owner and founder of the Catherston Stud with her husband Lieutenant Colonel Jack Bullen, but those two Anne Bullens should not be considered separately.  Her work breeding ponies influenced her illustrations directly:  Anne Bullen’s illustrations, although they portray different types of ponies and horses, all have a distinct Bullen “look”: a feeling of lightness of movement, and the almost fey quality of the top show pony.  

Both Bullens were brought up with horses, and started their stud after the second world war.  Jennie Loriston-Clarke, neé Bullen, said “they started rescuing a lot of ponies off the moors and crossing them with thoroughbreds to produce the British riding ponies which we all rode.”  The Bullens bred ponies of different sorts:  mostly Welsh to start with, but some Exmoor, Dartmoor and cross-breeds, who were ridden by the Bullen’s six children with considerable success.   

The ideal pony Anne Bullen worked for in her work breeding emerged too in her illustrations.   Cascade, in Monica Edwards’ Wish For A Pony, is the pony that inhabits many small girls’ dreams, and the British pony breed illustrations in Ponycraft all have a look about them almost of fantasy:  although recognisibly the breed, they are all overlaid with the characteristic Bullen feel.

Anne Bullen’s work illustrating went in tandem with her work on the stud.  After training at the Academie Julien in Paris and at the Chelsea School of Art (and also running a circus with her siblings) her career in book illustration coincided with the birth of the classic pony story:  one which is told from the point of view of the rider.  The first book Anne Bullen illustrated  was Joanna Cannan’s A Pony For Jean (Collins 1936), a funny and wry look at the acquisition of a pony and introduction to the countryside of an urban child.  It was, arguably, the first pony book to introduce what became the classic theme of the pony book:  a girl does not have a pony, wants one, gets one, learns to ride and competes successfully.

Anne Bullen worked principally for the publishers Collins from 1938 to 1950, thereby illustrating the work of some major contributors to the pony book genre:  all three Pullein-Thompson sisters (daughters of Joanna Cannan) and Monica Edwards, for whom she produced  arguably her most striking work. The fashion for producing pony book dustjackets as either black and white or virtually so ( the Pullein-Thompson’s Six Ponies and Three Ponies for Shannan both have only the faintest degree of colour) did not allow Anne Bullen to extend herself as much as she later did for Monica Edwards’ first four books.  These four stories all have full colour dustjackets which are delightful, in particular Wish for a Pony, which shows Cascade against a darkening sky:  he is the sort of pony who must have cantered through many pony obsessed children’s childhood, a noble creature from a dream, and not at all the mud covered shaggy pony far more likely to be the average child’s experience.

However much those four Edwards dustjackets attracted the reader, the author was not keen.  Monica Edwards felt constrained by the success of her first book, Wish for a Pony.  She wanted to break out of the pony book mould, and Anne Bullen was not the illustrator to help her do this; generally better aat ponies than  she was at children, Monica Edwards thought Anne Bullen’s drawings of children:  were, she said in conversation with Jill Goulder, “too ill and bony looking.”  Tamzin, the heroine of Wish for a Pony, was based on Edwards’ daughter, Shelley, who went and stayed with the Bullens in Dorset so she could be sketched:  beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as to me that drawing is charming, but after The Midnight Horse (Collins, 1949), Monica Edwards’ books were generally illustrated by Geoffrey Whittam.

It is true the ponies in Anne Bullen’s drawings emerge much more strongly than their riders:  which is possibly why she illustrated only two of Violet Needham’s novels, The Black Riders and The Emerald Crown.  Neither of these are pony stories, though their strongly Romantic setting and storylines are matched well by the quality of fantasy in the illustrations.

The books Anne Bullen illustrated in the 1950s were generally by minor authors, though she did illustrate a book for another pillar of the showing world, Glenda Spooner - The Silk Purse (Cassell, 1953).  Glenda Spooner, a formidable woman, started Ponies of Britain and ran their very successful show.  
  
Although Anne Bullen illustrated much fiction, she only made one excursion into it herself:  this was Darkie, the Life Story of a Pony, which was co-written with Rosemary Oldfield, and illustrated by Anne.  The two other books she wrote are both non-fiction:  Showing Ponies, published after her death, and Ponycraft, a short book combining the basics of looking after and riding a pony with a survey of British Native Pony breeds.  

The Catherston Stud still continues:  Anne Bullen died on 22nd December 1963 after fighting cancer for 5 years, and when her husband died in 1966, the Stud was taken over by Anne’s daughter, Jennie, and her husband Anthony Loriston-Clarke. The Stud now breeds horses rather than ponies, but most of their stallions are descended from the pony mares Anne and Jack Bullen bred.  Jennie Loriston Clarke is to retire this year (2010), and is to sell the Stud name and some of the stock.  

Sources:
Jennie Loriston-Clarke
Horse & Hound, 20th May 2010
Hilary Clare, and her article for Girls Gone By’s edition of Violet Needham’s The Black Riders
Brian Parkes:  Monica Edwards:  the Authorised Biography, Girls Gone By, 2010
The Dictionary of British Book Illustrators
An interview with Jennie Loriston-Clarke in Breeding News
The Catherston Stud Website (older version)
Photos of the Bullen Family taken from “Showing Ponies”

Bibliography:  written by Anne Bullen

Rosamund Oldfield & Anne Bullen:  Darkie, The Life Story of a Pony
Country Life 1950

Anne Bullen: Ponycraft
Blandford Press, 1956 (later reprint shown)

Anne Bullen:  Showing Ponies
J A Allen, 1964



Bibliography - books illustrated by Anne Bullen

Joanna Cannan  : A Pony For Jean
John Lane 1936

Joanna Cannan:  We Met Our Cousins
Collins 1937

Golden Gorse:  Janet and Felicity, The Young Horsebreakers Country Life 1937

Joanna Cannan:  Another Pony For Jean
Collins 1938

Garland Bullivant:  Fortune’s Foal
Country Life 1938

Joanna Cannan:  London Pride
Collins 1939

Walter Headford Brooke:  Gladeye, The War Horse
Collins 1939

Joanna Cannan:  More Ponies For Jean
Collins 1943

Joanna Cannan:  Hamish, the Story of a Shetland Pony
Puffin Picture Books 1944

Diana Pullein-Thompson:  I Wanted a Pony
Collins 1946

Josephine Pullein-Thompson:  Six Ponies
Collins 1946

Diana Pullein-Thompson:  Three Ponies and Shannan
Collins 1947

Josephine Pullein-Thompson:  I Had Two Ponies
Collins 1947

Monica Edwards,:  Wish for a Pony
Collins 1947

Monica Edwards:   No Mistaking Corker
Collins 1947

Monica Edwards:  The Summer of the Great Secret
Collins 1948

Josephine Pullein-Thompson:  Plenty of Ponies
Collins 1949

Monica Edwards:  The Midnight Horse
Collins 1949

Diana Pullein-Thompson:  A Pony To School
Collins 1950

Naomi Wainwright:  Island Pony Club
Country Life 1950

Marjorie Elspeth Procter:  The Pony Trackers
Blandford Press 195

Glenda Spooner:  The Silk Purse
Cassell 1953

Anna Hale:  Blue Indian Mystery
Blandford Press 1954

Marjorie Elspeth Procter:  The Treasure Riders
Blandford Press 1955

Geoffrey Lapage:  A Red Rosette
Burke 1957

Daphne Machin Goodall: Silver Spring and Other Stories Witherby 1958

Geoffrey Lapage:  A Pony Every Time
Burke 1958

Christine Pullein-Thompson:  For Want of a Saddle
Burke 1960

Diana Tuke:  A Long Road to Harringay
Cassell, 1960

Christine Pullein-Thompson:  The Empty Field
Burke 1961

Christine Leslie:  Four Start a Riding Club
Max Parrish 1963