Jane McIlvaine McClary

Jane McIlvaine McClary was born in Pittsburgh, and moved when she was 7 to Middleburg, Virginia.  There she went to a one-room school:  to get there, she rode her pony, but as the pony usually galloped off home during the day, she had to walk home.  Jane worked as an exercise jockey for a racing stable, and became well known in Virginia for her hunting prowess.  Hunting provided the background for several of her books, particularly her adult novel, A Portion for Foxes.  This portrait of life in an American hunt club is described variously as very funny, very controversial, and by Jane’s editor, Michael Korda as “a kind of Gone With the Wind” of fox hunting.”

Michael Korda, in his book Four Legs and Flies, about his adult infatuation with The Horse, wrote about visiting Jane.   Here it is described by Penelope Green, who reviewed the book for the New York Times.

“... deep in the 1960's, Korda makes a pilgrimage to Middleburg, Va., ''perhaps the horsiest place in America.'' He's there to deliver a sidesaddle to one of his authors, a horsewoman named Jane McIlvaine McClary, whose novel ''A Portion for Foxes'' became a sensation as ''a kind of 'Gone With the Wind' of fox hunting,'' as he describes it. Laboring under the misunderstanding that Korda is some sort of Pancho Villa in the saddle, his hostess leads him on a whiskey-fueled steeplechase through the rain, as well as into the Middleburg hunt itself, an haut-WASP ritual with more proscriptions and rites than a cardinal's mitering. It is at this final event that Korda disgraces himself, not only by charging past the master of the hunt on a horse he is unable to control but also by pretending not to see the fox -- the ultimate transgression.”

She worked on the Times Herald and Fortune magazine as a writer.  She married Robinson McIlvaine, and they moved to Downingtown, where they bought the Archive newspaper.  She and her husband did pretty much everything on the paper, and she chronicled their time there in It Happens Every Thursday, which was later turned into a film, starring Loretta Young as Jane.

The horse books for children best known in the UK are the Cammie books (although only the first two made it into print here).  Unlike British pony authors, Jane McIlvaine introduced romance into her books!

If you want to read her books, Cammie’s Challenge and A Portion for Foxes books are easy to find in the UK.  With two exceptions, all of the other books are easy to find either here or in America, with the exception of Cammie’s Choice and Cammie’s Cousin.  

Sources:
Cintra’s Challenge
New York Times

Amazon review of It Happens Every Thursday

Terri A. Wear:  Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibilography, Scarecrow Press, 1987

Many thanks to Susan Bourgeau for providing virtually all the photographs in this section.

The Cammie Series

Cammie’s Choice, 1961

Cammie’s Challenge, 1962

Cammie’s Cousin, 1963

Above: portrait of Jane McIlvaine

From jacket of Cintra’s Challenge

Copper's Chance

Macrae Smith, Philadelphia, 1951
illustrated by Paul Brown

(Republished as Blue Ribbon Romance,
Herkley Highland Books, pb, 1951
Berkley, New York, 1959, pb)

Copper likes the big black horse when he arrives at Mr Wainwright’s stable. This is just as well, as Copper
is the only one who can ride him.  

Cintra's Challenge

cover art Manning Dev. Lee

MacRae Smith Co, 1955
Willow Books, 1970, pb. Cover art uncredited

Cintra helps out her family run Shelbourne Hall.  Guests Gary Townsend and Sheila
Baker arrive, and Cintra finds she likes Gary just as much as Sheila does.

Cammie's Challenge

Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1962 (right)

illustrated by Wesley Dennis

Collins, 1964 (middle). Not illustrated

Collins Seagull, 1968 (far left)

Cammie is give a horse, Sabrina but as well as dealing with her
horse, also has to deal with growing up.

Cammie's Choice

Bobbs-Merill, Indianapolis, 1961

illustrated by Wesley Dennis

Collins, London, 1963
Collins Seagull

Cammie has a rather disastrous time on the Courtney’s Shetland pony Jason, but is then introduced to Missy
Devereux and the Pony Club, where Cammie lears to ride hunters, and starts hunting.  

Cammie's Cousin

Bobbs-Merill, Indianapolis, 1963

illustrated by Edward Shenton

Cammie visits Ireland with the Courtneys, and is asked at the last minute to show a pony at the Dublin
Horse Show.

Bibliography:  horse books only

Also
 

Front Page for Jennifer (about a young girl who wants to be a journalist)

MacCrae Smith, Philadelphia, 1950

It Happens Every Thursday
MacCrae Smith, Philadelphia, 1951
 

The Sea Sprite (about a girl who loves sailing)

MacCrae Smith, Philadelphia, 1952

Stardust for Jennifer

MacCrae Smith, Philadelphia, 1956

To Win the Hunt:  A Virginia Foxhunter in Ireland

Barre, Massachusetts, 1966

The Will to Win: The True Story of  Tommy Smith and Jay Trump
Doubleday, New York, 1966

Maggie Royal (a novel)
Simon & Schuster, 1981

A Portion for Foxes

Simon & Schuster, 1972

Popular library paperback 1972

(note, adult, not juvenile title....paperback cover art same as hardcover edition)
New England Library, London, 1974