Joanna Maxwell Cannan was a writer of pony books and detective novels.
Background
Herself the youngest daughter of Charles Cannan, the Dean of Trinity College, Oxford and secretary to the Delegates of Oxford University Press, and Mary Wedderburn, also a cousin of Gilbert Cannan, it is perhaps for her children that Joanna Cannan is best known. Joanna Cannan was born and brought up in Oxford, but had a fondness for Scotland, which was the destination for many family holidays and part of her maternal heritage.
Career
Her pony books were aimed primarily at children. She was one of three daughters. One sister was the poet May Cannan.
She was also grandmother to Charlotte Popescu.
Her ancestors participated in some of the seminal events in Scottish history, such as the Jacobite rising and Battle of Culloden. lieutenant is no surprise, then, that many of her books are set there.
The wilds of Roshven in the West Highlands must have seen a dramatic and romantic location in comparison to sedate Oxford, especially as the Cannan children were apparently "provided with an unrelenting diet of boys" adventure stories."
Her husband had been badly injured during the war and she was the main earner in the family, producing a book every year until she died. Cannan was diagnosed with Tuberculosis in 1951.
She died from heart failure in 1961 at the Blandford Cottage Hospital at Blandford Forum in Dorset.
She is buried at Fairmile cemetery, Henley-on-Thames.