Monica Edwards

In 1933, Monica married Bill Edwards, and in 1947 they and their two children, Shelley and Sean, moved to Pitlands Farm in Surrey, which Monica bought at an auction when her attention was perhaps more on the book she was reading at the time. The house was neglected: “There’s no water, no light, no drains, no bathroom, and the Other Place is at the bottom of the garden,” and the land was not a great deal better. In The Unsought Farm Monica describes how they slowly reclaimed the land and made the house habitable. The farm, re-named Punchbowl Farm, was to provide the inspiration for the Punchbowl Farm series. Unlike a lot of Monica fans, I far prefer the Punchbowl Farm series, probably because they were closer to my own experience. Like Lindsey, I wanted things to remain the same. I was devastated when my grandparents sold off for housing the small field and stables where we had played for days on end as children; though I could see why they felt they had to.

The books form two series: the Punchbowl Farm series about the Thornton family and Romney Marsh, featuring Tamzin and her friends Rissa, Roger and Meryon. The books are not really pony books: they don’t follow the usual pony book format focusing on looking after the pony, schooling it and going in for gymkhanas. The ponies are often integral to the story: Cascade, for example, performs an heroic role in Storm Ahead, and the ponies are used to help patrol the boundaries in No Entry, but the real interest of the stories is in how the characters react to the events going on around them. Monica Edwards never patronised her characters or her readers; she understood the tensions that happen in a family, and between friends, and set them brilliantly in the settings she obviously loved.

The majority of Monica Edwards’ books were published by Collins. Many of the Punchbowl Farm and Romney Marsh books were also published by Armada, who abridged some (but not all) of the stories. Storm Ahead and The White Riders were published by Puffin. There were also Children’s Book Club editions of some titles, and John Goodchild published (revised) editions. On a more hopeful note for those of us who have yet to find all the books, Girls Gone By are planning to reprint all of Monica Edwards’ works. I stock these, as well of course as the original books and paperbacks.

The series are:

Punchbowl Farm

No Mistaking Corker (Collins 1947)

Black Hunting Whip (Collins 1950)

Punchbowl Midnight (Collins 1951)

Spirit of Punchbowl Farm (Collins 1952)

The Wanderer (Collins 1953)

Punchbowl Harvest (Collins 1954)

Frenchman's Secret (Collins 1956)

The Cownappers (Collins 1958)

The Outsider (Collins 1961)

Fire in the Punchbowl (Collins 1965)

The Wild One (Collins 1967)

Romney Marsh

Wish for a Pony (Collins 1947)

The Summer of the Great Secret (Collins 1948)

The Midnight Horse (Collins 1949)

The White Riders (Collins 1950)

Cargo of Horses (Collins 1951)

Hidden in a Dream (Collins 1952)

Storm Ahead (Collins 1953)

No Entry (Collins 1954)

The Nightbird (Collins 1955)

Operation Seabird (Collins 1957)

Strangers to the Marsh (Collins 1957)

No Going Back (Collins 1960)

The Hoodwinkers (Collins 1962)

Dolphin Summer (Collins 1963)

A Wind is Blowing (Collins 1969)

Monica Le Doux Edwards (nee Newton) was born on 8 November 1912 in Belper, Derbyshire. One of four children, her father, the Revd Harry Newton was a vicar. In 1927 he accepted the living of Rye Harbour, in East Sussex. Although her brothers and sister were educated (her brothers with a tutor and her sister at boarding school), Monica initially was not, and she took full advantage of her school-free state; roaming the marsh and befriending the fishermen and villagers, who later became part of her Romney Marsh series