Overview

Black Beauty begins with a young horse's carefree days as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding of horses. While forthrightly teaching animal welfare, Black Beauty also teaches how to treat people with kindness, sympathy, and respect. The novel became an immediate best-seller, with Sewell dying just five months after its publication, but having lived long enough to see her only novel become a success. With fifty million copies sold, Black Beauty is one of the best-selling books of all time. This cloth-bound book includes a Victorian inspired dust-jacket, and is limited to 100 copies.

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9781772265330

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Anna Sewell was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, in 1820 into a devoutly Quaker family. Her mother, Mary Wright Sewell was a successful author of children's books. She was largely educated at home. Sewell's only published work was Black Beauty, written in the period between 1871 and 1877, after she had moved to Old Catton, a village outside the city of Norwich in Norfolk. During this time her health was declining. She was often so weak that she was confined to her bed and writing was a challenge. She dictated the text to her mother and from 1876 began to write on slips of paper which her mother then transcribed. Sewell sold the novel to local publisher Jarrolds on 24 November 1877, when she was 57 years of age. Although it is now considered a children's classic, she originally wrote it for those who worked with horses. She said a special aim [was] to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses. Sewell died on 25 April 1878 of hepatitis or tuberculosis, five months after her book was published, living long enough to see its initial success.

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