Last Saturday I started a survey to explore just who are our favourite Mary Stewart characters. That survey aimed to find out our favourite heroine/narrator from the five earliest Mary Stewart books, from Madam, Will You Talk? to My Brother Michael. So far, the vote between Charity, Linda and Camilla is incredibly close. If you have not yet voted in this first poll, please do so!
Mary Stewart wrote 15 suspense novels so this poll is on the ‘middle’ five novels, that is the heroines of The Ivy Tree through to The Gabriel Hounds.
I have dithered and swithered about whether to include The Wind Off the Small Isles in this list so that it is a poll of all the 1960s thrillers but decided to split the poll into three sets of five heroines instead. The dates are, after all, quite arbitrary: some might argue that My Brother Michael belongs in the 1960s group as that is when it was first published in book form; someone else might argue that The Ivy Tree belongs in the 1950s as that is when it was written with only the final ‘polishing’ draft taking place in 1960.
So here is our poll:
I really hope that you will vote – and if you can also take the time to write a comment that would be wonderful. The comments from the first poll are well worth reading for how different readers made the decision they did, and which two of the five heroines they struggled to choose between.
Again, can I ask you to spread the word about these polls, please? It would be great to have many votes cast to give us a true picture of just who is our most popular Mary Stewart heroine. Thank you!
Featured image information.
I made this collage for free via PicMonkey. Our pictured heroines, l to r, are:
Lucy (from Companion Book Club edition, 1964, of This Rough Magic, illustrated by Victor Bertoglio);
Christy (from Hodder paperback, 1969, of The Gabriel Hounds, illustrator unknown);
Nicola (from Hodder paperback, 1969, of The Moon-Spinners, illustrator unknown);
Mary/Annabel (from The Reader’s Digest Association Ltd, 1963, of The Ivy Tree, illustrated by Walter Wyles);
Vanessa (from The Reader’s Digest Association Ltd, 1966, of Airs Above the Ground, illustrated by Francis Marshall)
Mary Queen of Plots 
Wow, this one was a much, much more difficult choice for me than the first poll – I really like all of these characters! I finally decided on Lucy for her love of animals (and bravery where they are concerned) and her verbal attack on the bad guy (trying not to give spoilers here :))
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Hi Laura, thanks for voting and for your feedback – I feel just the same as you, it is almost impossible to choose between these wonderful characters. Possibly for me Vanessa ‘wins’ because her character shows up so well in the relationship with Timothy, the teenage boy she accompanies to Europe. But I’ve just read The Ivy Tree again and Mary-Annabel is amazing… And Lucy… And… No, choosing a favourite is not easy!
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I was thinking that this could be the most difficult of the three sets of five characters… but I’m re-reading The Stormy Petrel right now and recently re-read The Wind Off The Small Isles. That would also be a tough choice
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And guess what part 3 of the poll will be? Perhaps you should start deciding now! Then we might pit the three poll winners against one another to find out our ‘favourite of favourites’… I don’t think there are any easy decisions here
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I’m currently re-reading The Stormy Petrel (found some more garden references) and I do like Rose. But I also recently re-read The Wind Off The Small Isles… there really are no easy decisions. One thing is for sure, I definitely prefer all of them to many of the other fictional characters I’ve read about lately!
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Oh that’s good, I hope you’ll share these gardening references on your blog! I really like how you shine a light on Mary Stewart’s nature writing.
MS’s characters are terrific aren’t they? I’m not sure what order of preference I’d have for the last group of heroines, I have read Small Isles and Touch Not the Cat fairly recently but I might have to re-read the others. (Any excuse!) ☺
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Thanks! The nature comes through her books more strongly for me than it does with any other fiction writer (except maybe Enid Blyton, actually – my introduction to adventure writing as a child :))
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I was a big fan of Enid Blyton too – luckily the class aspects went over my head as the way she wrote working-class voices was not even remotely like any Scottish voice… I don’t know what this says about me but it is more her writing on food that I remember than her writing on nature… I can visualise cliffs and beaches from her books but I don’t remember much about plants.
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I think you’re right, there isn’t too much about plants, but I do remember the farm books being interesting to me because of the chickens… and I came across mentions of fruit like damsons in some of the Famous Five books, which I’d never heard of before
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I don’t really remember farm ones – my favourites were the Famous Five and the R ones (Rilloby Fair, Rat-a-Tat-Tat etc mysteries, with Snubby, Barney etc). It is EB that made me a reader, and who made me wish desperately for smugglers etc to detect!
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My favourites were definitely the Famous Five as well – I think they started me on a lifetime of reading adventure books (fiction and non-fiction). I also own (I’m just looking at the shelves in my office) the farm books (Cherry Tree Farm and Willow Farm), the Faraway Tree, the Wishing Chair and some of the school books (Malory Towers and St Claires).
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I missed the farm ones but loved the others and the Naughtiest Girl books. My Famous Five books that I saved up for as a child are boxed up in the loft at the moment. For me it was a smooth move from EB to Agatha Christie and Mary Stewart – and via Nancy Drew too.
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That’s pretty much what happened for me as well – from EB to Mary Stewart (thanks to my grandmothers introducing me to them), as well as a lot of non-fiction adventure books
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That was really tough, with four of my favourite heroines from my favourite books! I should have gone for Annabel (my namesake!) because The Ivy Tree is probably my favourite of the books and I would definitely say it’s MS’s best. I like Annabel a lot, but she is so unhappy for so much of the book – and for plot-related reasons, reluctant to say much about her feelings, which is a disadvantage in a narrator – that it is hard to warm to her.
Lucy and Nicola are both delightfully adventurous, funny and uncomplicated (sometimes it’s a relief to have a heroine with no ‘baggage’), but in the end I went for Vanessa March. She has just enough baggage to make her interesting, but it doesn’t overshadow the book, which makes her a delightful travelling companion. Unlike many MS heroines, she has/had an interesting and demanding job (as a vet) although it always annoyed me slightly that it is simply unquestioned that she gave it up as soon as she married. But my favourite aspect of Vanessa and of the book is her ability to make friends with an awkward teenage boy. Her relationship with Timothy really brings the book to life and makes every scene entertaining.
I visited Vienna as a teenager and of course the book was on my mind while I was there, but I never went for drinks in The Blue Bar or tangled with a circus troupe. I did however insist on dragging my friends to see the Spanish horses training – it’s far cheapier and easier to go to than actual performances, since all they do is trot round a ring in circles, but at least then you can say you have seen them!
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Hi Annabel, yes this is a painful choice! Thanks for voting and for your comments – I love learning how readers make their selections. And you are right, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the favourite heroine is the one in the best/favourite novel.
Ooh you’ve seen the Lipizzaner horses, even in training that must have been wonderful!
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I agree, this was a very difficult choice to make. Lucy, Nicola and Vanessa are my three favorite heroines from my top Mary Stewart stories. I finally decided on Vanessa, since I enjoy the fact that she was a veterinarian, a dream of mine as a child. I related to another comment here in that I am always annoyed Vanessa gave up her career after her marriage. After finishing this book as a teenager, I read everything I could find about Lipizzaner horses and dreamed of seeing them one day. I loved her compassion for animals and the supporting characters surrounding her, a strength shared by Lucy in “This Rough Magic.” I particularly liked her friendship with Timothy. Like all of Mary Stewart’s heroines, Vanessa has wonderfully witty and ironic dialogue, and even her thoughts are witty! This is one of the things that make Mary Stewart’s books so fun for me to read.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Linda!
I have nodded along to all your comments. When Airs was written, I imagine it was still quite common for women to stop (paid!) work upon marriage. But of course Mary Stewart herself kept working after marriage… At the time of writing it would have been a convenient way of having Vanessa have veterinarian skills yet be free to dash across Europe at a moment’s notice. This wouldn’t work in a more modern novel!
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Why, oh why did I have to choose between these particular books? I went for Mary/Annabel in the end because it is my all-time favourite MS book, but I do agree with Annabel F’s comments about her unhappiness. The thing is, I also agree with everyone else’s comments about their choices – shows what a brilliant writer MS was that we can agonise about her characters this way!
It’s just that ‘The Ivy Tree’ was the first book I read with such a complex main character and such a brilliant plot twist, and nothing has ever managed to surpass it for me!
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Thanks for your comments, Rosetta!
I almost feel guilty for asking people to choose between our heroines – I say almost because it makes for fascinating comments, I love reading how you all tease out just how you select a favourite. I have the same difficulties as all of you, of course – for me, they are *all* my favourites!
I agree with your comments on The Ivy Tree, it is such a good and clever novel.
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If I wasn’t about a year too late, I think I would have voted for Christy in the Gabriel Hounds. I like the way she is honest enough to admit to being rich and spoiled, yet is actually pretty tough and brave. You wouldn’t catch me sleeping away from everyone in the dark in a ruined seraglio, with torrential rain coming in through the roof! And her lack of snobbery: I like the way she makes friends with her Arab car-driver, with the young goat boy and with the potentially terrifying dogs!
Admittedly, I’ve not yet read Airs above the Ground or The Ivy Tree, so maybe I’m not qualified to judge.
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Those are great comments, Lucina, Christy does have a lot going for her – and I certainly could not have done the brave things she did! Mary Stewart wrote: ‘I rather think that the hero or heroine of a novel should observe certain standards of conduct, of ethics, a somewhat honourable behaviour pattern. I know that I can’t go along with anyone I don’t admire’ (interview with Roy Newquist in Counterpoint) – so I think MS admired bravery and lack of snobbery and being ‘honourable’ and has her heoines live this out in an unfussy way, making them all a great bunch of women. I’ll be interested to learn your thoughts on Vanessa and Annabel once you read those books too. Thanks for popping by!
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