Mary Gervaise is the pseudonym for Joan Mary Wayne Brown. She was born on 21 April 1906, the daughter of an accountant and a Newnham classics graduate. She went to boarding school herself at the age of 12 in Broadstairs, although this was short lived. After she got into deep trouble for bringing The Adventures of Sherlock Homes to school, she was taken away and sent to Eversfield School in Sutton, where her family lived. The family moved to Exeter when Joan was 18. At that age, she developed anaemia and instead of going to college, started to write. The family moved back to Guildford, where she lived until she died on 26 April 1998.
She was a prolific writer, writing 66 books as Mary Gervaise (she also wrote adult novels under the names Hilary Wayne and Bellamy Brown). The vast majority are school stories, which she wrote almost exclusively for a twenty year period from her first novel in 1928, Tiger’s First Term. When the school story started to decline in popularity after the Second World War, Mary Gervaise and her publishers decided that pony stories were the next big thing, and so the G for Georgia series was born, neatly combining two styles of genre fiction. Mary Gervaise had her own experience with horses during the Second World War. She worked at a local hospital in the first aid post, and a nursing friend there had a stable at Guildford.
Most pony stories took place firmly after school or during the holidays, ponies and school generally not mixing, but at Mary Gervaise’s Grange School, ponies were central. Indeed, this provides much of the tension in the first book A Pony of Your Own. Its heroine, Georgia, is terrified of horses, and horrified by the prospect of going to a boarding school where all the other pupils are horse mad and the school has its own stables.
However, in true school (and pony) story tradition, Georgia overcomes her fears (which was just as well as it would have been tricky to have sustained a long pony book series where the heroine was too scared to go near a pony). Although Georgia remains fearful, she forms a strong relationship with her pony Spot, and with a group of girls at the school.
Mary Gervaise was not in the first rank of either school or pony authors. Sue Sims and Hilary Clare said:
“She is not an exceptionally good writer, but she is a competent plotter, [and] draws character and relationships quite well...” (Encyclopaedia of School Stories, Ashgate 2000)
Sources
Clare, Hilary & Sims, Sue: The Encyclopaedia of Girls’ School Stories, Ashgate 2000
The Georgia series:
A Pony of Your Own
Lutterworth, 1950, illus E Herbert Whydale
Ponies and Holidays
Lutterworth, 1950, illus E Herbert Whydale
Ponies in Clover
Lutterworth, 1952, illus E Herbert Whydale
Ponies and Mysteries
Lutterworth, 1953, illus Bowe
A Pony from the Farm
Lutterworth, 1954, illus Bowe
The Pony Clue
Lutterworth, 1955, illus Bowe
Pony Island
Lutterworth, 1957, illus John Raynes
The Vanishing Pony
Lutterworth, 1958, illus John Raynes
Puzzle of Ponies
Lutterworth, 1964, illus John Raynes
The Secret of Pony Pass
Lutterworth, 1965, illus John Raynes
The Belinda Series
A Pony for Belinda
Lutterworth, 1959, illus John Raynes
Belinda Rides to School
Lutterworth, 1960, illus John Raynes
Belinda’s Other Pony
Lutterworth, 1961, illus John Raynes
Belinda Wins Her Spurs
Lutterworth, 1962, illus John Raynes
The Farthingale Series
Fireworks at Farthingale
Nelson, 1954, illus Robert Hodgson
The Farthingale Fete
Nelson, 1955, illus A H Watson
The Farthingale Feud
Nelson, 1957, illus A H Watson
The Farthingale Find
Nelson, 1961, illus A H Watson
