Mary O'Hara

Jane Badger Books

Mary O’Hara

Links and Sources
A more detailed biography from Georgetown University. The University holds typed manuscripts for Flicka’s Friend and The Catch Colt.

Review of Flicka’s Friend

The Wikipedia entry on Mary O’Hara

Mary O’Hara is one of the very few pony book authors who has remained in print. Some of her books are still available today: she is helped in this by the fact she is American, as horse books in the USA do not seem to have suffered the same lack of publisher’s enthusiasm as in the UK.

Mary O’Hara was born in 1885 in New Jersey. She travelled widely in Europe with her grandmother, studied harmony and composition in London and went to an English boarding school in Italy. After her first marriage, she moved to California, where she became a screen-writer, and had a son and a daughter. Her daughter sadly died young of cancer. Mary married again in 1922, and this time moved to Wyoming, and it was here that she wrote her ranch novels: My Friend Flicka, The Green Grass of Wyoming and Thunderhead. Her biography, Flicka’s Friend, describes her life in Wyoming on the Remount Ranch with her second husband. Alas, he was a philander, and nothing like the Rob of the novels, and there are other aspects of the novels which did not happen in real life. Flicka in real life died of her barbed wire wounds. Mary always felt if she had stayed with her in the stream, she might have lived.

The world portrayed in Mary O’Hara’s Wyoming novels is life as she must have wished it could be. Ironically, it was the success of the books, rather than the success of the ranch, that funded their life there, and eventually Mary divorced her second husband, Helge Sture-Vasa, and moved back East. She lived in Maryland until her death on 14 October 1980.

Mary O’Hara was a gifted composer and besides several works for the piano and harp, wrote a musical called The Catch Colt. This she turned into a novella for Methuen, and she also wrote a book about the musical’s composition, called A Musical in the Making.

In the UK, her books are very easy to find, as they were printed by paperback by Dragon Books. Each story was split into several different books (perhaps uniquely: I can’t think of another pony book where this happened!). The books have also been published as single paperback volumes, and were also published as hardbacks, some with fine illustrators such as Charles Tunnicliffe.

Printings in the UK pale into insignificance beside those in the USA. The first edition of My Friend Flicka, originally published in the USA without illustrations, is immensely difficult to find, but the avalanche of editions which appeared afterwards are easier. If you want the true first editions, published of course in the USA, be prepared to dig deep. They are not cheap.

The books have been filmed several times: in the second version of Flicka, Ken becomes Katie!

Many thanks to Susan Bourgeau, Hannah Fleetwood and Barbara Harris for all their help with the pictures.

Bibliography
My Friend Flicka
J B Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1941

Thunderhead

J B Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1943

Green Grass of Wyoming

J B Lippincott,Philadelphia, 1946

The Catch Colt

Methuen, 1979

Also:

Wyoming Summer, 1963
A Musical in the Making (about the Catch Colt)

Flicka’s Friend, 1982

UK
Hardback editions of Flicka:
Eyre &Spottiswoode, London, 1943
Reprinted 1968 and later, illus Charles Tunnicliffe
Methuen, 1974, far right
Isis (Large Print), 1986

UK PAPERBACKS

Dragon Books, pb, 1966, Parts 1 and 2; later reprints
Illus Charles Tunnicliffe
Mammoth, pb, 1989, illus Charles Tunnicliffe
Dean, 1994
Egmont, 2004

My Friend Flicka
J B Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1941. Not illustrated.
Cover by Cosgrove

Ken is a dreamer; he achieves nothing and infuriates his capable and not always understanding
father Rob. Nell,Ken’s mother, persuades Rob to give Ken a colt to help him to grow up. Rob
allows this, and Ken choses Flicka a colt out of one of the hellion mares sired by the Albino,
a rogue wild horse. Flicka is terribly injured trying to escape from captivity, and as he nurses
her, both Ken and Flicka change. There are many ups and downs, and at the end it seems as
though Flicka, lying in a frozen stream, must die.

Other USA editions of Flicka:
Popular edition (with pink covers, no wraparound illustration)

HarperFestival Charming Classics edition, 2003, 346 pp. Cover art Dave Kramer

Bibliography

UK editions:
Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1947
Redwood Press, 1969 (bottom right)
Methuen, London, 1974 (right)

Paperbacks:

Dragon UK printings
1966 (Pts 1, 2 and 3)
1979 (Pts 1, 2 and 3)

Green Grass of Wyoming
J B Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1946 (right)
Many later reprints: pictorial cover, left

Thunderhead’s future looks very shaky: he might have to be shot. Ken meets a girl
(owner of a filly lost in a railroad accident), and at last Thunderhead’s, and Ken’s
futures are decided.

UK EDITIONS

Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1945
Reprinted 1970s (right)
Dragon, paperback
1966, Parts 1, 2 and 3
Reprinted 1970s
Methuen, 1974
Magnet, 1978
Mammoth, 1986 (left), 1995
Egmont, 2004

Thunderhead
J B Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1943

Thunderhead is Flicka’s colt, by Appalachian. It is soon obvious that the white colt,
with his”scrabbling” action, is a throwback to the Albino. Much more centred on the
adults than the children, this story revolves around the relationship between Rob and
Nell, which is close to disintegration as the horse business is less and less
successful. Rob cannot bear to fail, or be questioned. Ken does succeed in taming
hunderhead, but the horse longs to revert to his wild nature, even though Ken hopes he
will save the family fortunes by becoming a successful racehorse.