The Brumby series does have one peculiarity: Rebel Brumby’s dustjacket says it is the eighth Brumby book, but Austlit in her entry mentions only seven, as listed below. She does not flinch from the harsh realities of the Australian bush, and neither does she drift off into the romanticised oddities which afflicted the last of Elyne Mitchell’s Silver Brumby series. Whatever you might think of its story, the book is notable for having some of the nastiest cover illustrations in the pony book world. Her Summer on Wild Horse Island is a standalone book. Her Ajax series does involve horses, but apart from Tam the Untamed, horses are peripheral. Mary Elwyn Patchett wrote one major pony series: The Brumby. Her books were translated into many different languages, and she was considered to be the most widely read Australian children’s author of her time. She acted, and also owned a beauty salon for a time (which inspired her career novel, The Lee Twins, Beauty Students (1953). Inspired by the idea of space flight, she wrote Lost on Venus and Kidnapped in Space. She continued to work for Children’s Hour over the years, and continued to write for children on many subjects. Her first book, Ajax the Warrior, which was originally broadcast on BBC Children’s Hour, drew heavily on her childhood. Although she only returned to Australia for holidays, it is there that her books are set. The dustjacket of Tam the Untamed said ‘humans, especially young ones, were looked upon by her in the way most people regard tigers.’ After working as a journalist in Australia, she lived and worked in England from 1931. She was a solitary child, spending her time with pets and the animals from the bush, and it is this world on which she drew for her books. Mary Elwyn Patchett grew up on a cattle station in Texas, Queensland. The Bibliography of Australian Literature mentions that she is supposed to have written under the name David Bruce, but no works have been found (despite extensive searching) under that name.

She wrote under the names Mary Elwyn Patchett, M E Patchett and Mary Patchett. Mary Elwyn Patchett (1897–1989) was an Australian author who lived most of her life in Britain.

Ajax the Warrior by Mary Elwyn Patchett