Jill has Two Ponies

Jill has been dreaming of getting another pony, and here she is, with her prospective new pony in front of her. There's just one problem. Jill doesn't take to Rapide, and Rapide doesn't take to her. But Jill buys him, and then immediately regrets it. How Jill gets over her dislike of Rapide, while managing with her friends to save Mrs Darcy's riding school, makes this a classic of pony literature.

Ruby Ferguson, born in West Yorkshire in 1899, attended Bradford Girls' Grammar School and then read English at St Hilda's College, Oxford between 1919 and 1922. After completing her MA, Ruby Ferguson moved to Manchester and started working as a secretary. Her writing career really began when she entered some detective stories in a competition in the Manchester Evening News. Her first full length novel was published in 1926, under the name R. C. Ashby, and she continued writing under this name until her marriage in 1934. The books for which Ferguson is best known are those about Jill Crewe and her ponies which she wrote for her step-grandchildren. Her final book, published in 1967, the year after her death, is titled The Children at the Shop and is a fictionalized autobiography of her childhood.