Joanna Cannan was born Joanna Maxwell in 1896.  She was the daughter of Charles Cannan, Dean of Trinity College, Oxford, and his wife Mary, parents who lived their lives separately from their children:  Mary in fact preferred adult company.  Apart from school three mornings a week, Joanna and her two sisters relied on each other for company and amusement.

At 18, she thought that free love and painting in a Parisian garrett would be her lot, but she met and married Captain James Pullein-Thompson in 1918.  Although he had a commanding presence, and a fine war record, he found earning money difficult and Joanna had to do something to supplement the family income.  Perhaps her childhood taught her self-reliance:  she certainly scorned convention. When her twins Diana and Christine were born, she was asked “Are your twins normal?”  She replied:  “Good God, I hope not.”  At any event, she began writing, and her first book, The MistyValley, was published in 1922.  

She carried on writing for adults while her children were small.  Family tradition has it that the monthly nurse said “Put away that scribbling Dear, Baby’s coming,” as Josephine made her entrance into the world.  Her writing was well-received, and the family (Denis, the eldest, Josephine, and the twins Christine and Diana) were able to move to the country.  They lived at The Grove, in Oxfordshire, a square white house with stables, and later, ponies.  

Here Joanna carried on writing, while her children developed their own writing careers.  She died on 22 April 1961, reciting Landor’s ‘I strove with none, for none was worth my strife”.  Her eldest daughter, Josephine Pullein-Thompson, said:  “We were lucky to have a lively and witty mother; who, though often critical, was never boring and never nagged.”

Sources

Pullein-Thompson, Josephine, Christine and Diana:  Fair Girls and Grey Horses, Allison & Busby 1996

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Links
Persephone Books will be re-printing some of Joanna Cannan’s adult works.    

If you have access to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, you can read a biography of Joanna Cannan there.  Many local libraries subscribe to the DNB so you might be able to access the information there.
 

Fidra Books are re-printing Joanna Cannan’s pony books.  I now have We Met Our Cousins in stock.

Clarissa Cridland has a little about Joanna Cannan in her pony book article for the Collecting Books and Magazines site.