Black Beauty
by Anna Sewell
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, is an 1877 novel that teaches how to treat animals and people with kindness, sympathy, and respect.
She wrote whilst bed ridden and died five months after it was published. The novel became an immediate best-seller so she lived long enough to see her only novel become a success. It continues to be a best selling book.
Recommendations from our site
“As a horsey young girl, it was a wonderful book to have read to you. It was written in 1877, in the first person – ground-breaking at the time.Basically it is the memoir of a horse called Black Beauty, who starts off as a happy young colt on a farm then gets sold to pull cabs in London and isn’t treated very well, but finally ends up in a happy retirement.” Read more...
The best books on The Equestrian Life
Mary King, Sportspersons & Sportswriter
“The first book that gave consciousness and personality to an animal which is the horse, Black Beauty. It is narrated in the first person and is supposedly his autobiography. Black Beauty starts off life with a loving mother and great happiness and a good owner. Then he gets sold from one person to another and it is a terrible tragic story of the erosion of happiness and health, until finally, when broken-down and near death from ill-treatment, he is rescued. So it is a story of paradise lost, and regained.” Read more...
Amanda Craig, Journalist
