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Red Roan Pony
good condition for a book this age
Textbook Binding
First published January 1, 1934
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August 15, 2025
The actual title to this book is The Red Roan Pony, not Red Roan Pony. It's not to be confused with John Steinbeck's The Red Pony.
This was first published in 1934 by J. B. Lippincott Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Please note that the name of the author was Joseph Wharton Lippincott. He was the grandson of the founder of J. B. Lippincott Company.
Only nepotism can explain not only why such a shitty book was published, but that such a prominent equine artist as C. W. Anderson was secured to provide the cover and seven ghostly pencil interior illustrations. I'm an Anderson fan, which is how I stumbled upon this book in the Internet Archive.
Nepotism also explains why J. B. Lippincott Company vanished into publisher merger hell in 1978. Today, the building that housed the company has been transformed into luxury condos, and Lippincott itself was regulated to a niche market of medical texts.
Anyway, back to the book.
Although the author Lippincott claimed to be an experienced horseman, he wasn't. He was a sport hunter, part-time publisher, silver-spoon fed upper class twit his whole life. He lived mostly in the greater Philadelphia area.
Which explains why he wrote as if the only thing he ever read about the West and horses were from dime novels. This is so unrealistic that you'd be forgiven if you thought this was an alternative historical fiction.
I knew I was in trouble with the third freaking page, where a circus pony is described as being a wild white Spanish pony.
I've been learning and reading about horses for over 50 years. I've not once ever heard of wild white ponies from Spain, that lived "among the hills that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea." I have heard of semi-wild herds of ponies called Sorraias -- of which none are grey-white. They're all dun or grulla. They are notorious for their lack of beauty, although they are smart, friendly, strong, and more likely to have been the ancestors of Mustangs than Andalusians. They do not, and never did, resemble a miniature Thoroughbred, as described here.
This grey pony -- who is never named -- becomes the focus for the book, then disappears and comes back without much warning. She's the red roan pony's mother. This is a major problem of the narration. Important details just come and go without warning.
The wild red roan is captured and tamed by a boy with a "peculiar power over animals". He also is the salt of the earth and completely selfless. Jesus, you come to really hate him by the book's end.
The pony, named Reddy, is the paragon of all ponies. Among other things, he:
* Cures a terminally ill girl after she rides him (I fucking kid you not)
* Wins a race against two Thoroughbred racetrack veterans
* Scares a bear with the power of his snort (again -- I kid you not. It's on page 55.)
* Runs faster than coyotes or wolves, so that the miraculous boy could ROPE THEM AND FLING THEM ONTO THE BACK OF REDDY.
There are more thoroughly unbelievable misadventures that I just can't bring it in myself to recount here because I really do not want to throw up all over my tablet.
The prose is incredibly amateurish, with terrible but deliberate misspellings (such as "Man-of-war" for "Man o' War", which even the most illiterate of Americans knew how to spell by 1934 since HE WAS A NATIONAL CELEBRITY AND REGUARDED AS THE BEST RACEHORSE OF THE 20th Century), misuse of punctuation marks, confusingly naming the only two boys in the book Jimmie and Jack, using the term "several" when he only means "two or three", not knowing anything about bush track racing of the times, and even worse, not knowing anything about horse behavior.
For a horse book, that's kind of important.
He also doesn't know how the horse shows of his day worked. At Reddy's first show at the even then prestigious Monmouth County Horse Show, he should have been immediately disqualified for bolting into and around the ring several times instead of WINNING when the rider TAKES OFF REDDY'S SADDLE AND BRIDLE to ride him for the judge.
If you love horses, you will hate this book. If you love a good read, you will hate this book. If you love reading really bad books in order to laugh at them you might like this book a teeny bit.
Otherwise, just look at the illustrations and skip the text.
This was first published in 1934 by J. B. Lippincott Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Please note that the name of the author was Joseph Wharton Lippincott. He was the grandson of the founder of J. B. Lippincott Company.
Only nepotism can explain not only why such a shitty book was published, but that such a prominent equine artist as C. W. Anderson was secured to provide the cover and seven ghostly pencil interior illustrations. I'm an Anderson fan, which is how I stumbled upon this book in the Internet Archive.
Nepotism also explains why J. B. Lippincott Company vanished into publisher merger hell in 1978. Today, the building that housed the company has been transformed into luxury condos, and Lippincott itself was regulated to a niche market of medical texts.
Anyway, back to the book.
Although the author Lippincott claimed to be an experienced horseman, he wasn't. He was a sport hunter, part-time publisher, silver-spoon fed upper class twit his whole life. He lived mostly in the greater Philadelphia area.
Which explains why he wrote as if the only thing he ever read about the West and horses were from dime novels. This is so unrealistic that you'd be forgiven if you thought this was an alternative historical fiction.
I knew I was in trouble with the third freaking page, where a circus pony is described as being a wild white Spanish pony.
I've been learning and reading about horses for over 50 years. I've not once ever heard of wild white ponies from Spain, that lived "among the hills that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea." I have heard of semi-wild herds of ponies called Sorraias -- of which none are grey-white. They're all dun or grulla. They are notorious for their lack of beauty, although they are smart, friendly, strong, and more likely to have been the ancestors of Mustangs than Andalusians. They do not, and never did, resemble a miniature Thoroughbred, as described here.
This grey pony -- who is never named -- becomes the focus for the book, then disappears and comes back without much warning. She's the red roan pony's mother. This is a major problem of the narration. Important details just come and go without warning.
The wild red roan is captured and tamed by a boy with a "peculiar power over animals". He also is the salt of the earth and completely selfless. Jesus, you come to really hate him by the book's end.
The pony, named Reddy, is the paragon of all ponies. Among other things, he:
* Cures a terminally ill girl after she rides him (I fucking kid you not)
* Wins a race against two Thoroughbred racetrack veterans
* Scares a bear with the power of his snort (again -- I kid you not. It's on page 55.)
* Runs faster than coyotes or wolves, so that the miraculous boy could ROPE THEM AND FLING THEM ONTO THE BACK OF REDDY.
There are more thoroughly unbelievable misadventures that I just can't bring it in myself to recount here because I really do not want to throw up all over my tablet.
The prose is incredibly amateurish, with terrible but deliberate misspellings (such as "Man-of-war" for "Man o' War", which even the most illiterate of Americans knew how to spell by 1934 since HE WAS A NATIONAL CELEBRITY AND REGUARDED AS THE BEST RACEHORSE OF THE 20th Century), misuse of punctuation marks, confusingly naming the only two boys in the book Jimmie and Jack, using the term "several" when he only means "two or three", not knowing anything about bush track racing of the times, and even worse, not knowing anything about horse behavior.
For a horse book, that's kind of important.
He also doesn't know how the horse shows of his day worked. At Reddy's first show at the even then prestigious Monmouth County Horse Show, he should have been immediately disqualified for bolting into and around the ring several times instead of WINNING when the rider TAKES OFF REDDY'S SADDLE AND BRIDLE to ride him for the judge.
If you love horses, you will hate this book. If you love a good read, you will hate this book. If you love reading really bad books in order to laugh at them you might like this book a teeny bit.
Otherwise, just look at the illustrations and skip the text.
Displaying 1 of 1 review