Marcia Lane Foster

Biographical information on Marcia Lane Foster is hard to find.  She was a prolific illustrator, working on Pamela Brown’s later works, and Viola Bayley’s lengthy Adventure series, but her work in the pony book genre was unfortunately small.  I love the way she includes the spine of the book in her jacket designs, particularly for Christine Pullein-Thompson’s We Hunted Hounds, where the hounds are seen galloping along the spine, wit h the rest of the field on the front..  I also like her use of white to delineate in Mary de la Mahotiére’s Round-up On Exmoor.

She wrote a few books:  early readers for Humphrey Milord and the Oxford University Press, all published in the 1920s.   Her Let’s Do It ((1938) is a collection of her sketches, and includes a section on the Pony Club.

Bibliography - Pony Books

Christine Pullein-Thompson:  We Hunted Hounds

Collins, London, 1949

Kitty Barne: Rosina and Son

Evans, London, 1956

Mary de la Mahotiere: Round Up on Exmoor

Lutterworth, London, 1961

Gillian Baxter:  The Team from Low Moor
Evans, London, 1965

Bibliography - Authored By:

Baa-Baa
Humphrey Milord, OUP, 1926

Gee-Gee
Humphrey Milord, OUP, 1926

Moo-Moo
Humphrey Milord, OUP, 1926

Let’s Do It: Sketches of Children etc

Collins, 1938