Black Beauty

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Black Beauty  

First Edition, F.M. Lupton Publishing Company, New York City, New York
Author Anna Sewell
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher F.M. Lupton Publishing Company
Publication date 24 November 1877
For other uses, see Black Beauty (disambiguation).

Black Beauty is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she was confined to her house as an invalid.[1] The novel became an immediate bestseller, with Sewell living just long enough (five months) to see her first and only novel become a success. Although not originally intended as a children's novel, but for people who work with horses, it soon became a children's classic[citation needed]. While outwardly teaching animal welfare, it also contains allegorical lessons about how to treat people with kindness, sympathy and respect. Despite recollections to the contrary, there is no evidence that this book was ever banned in South Africa [2].

Contents

[edit] Plot introduction

The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by a horse named Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days as a colt on an English farm, 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 treatment of horses, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude.[1]

[edit] Background

Crippled and unable to walk since a young child, Anna Sewell began learning about horses early in life, spending many hours driving her father to and from the station from which he commuted to work. Sewell's introduction to writing began in her youth when she helped edit the works of her mother, Mary Wright Sewell (1797-1884), a deeply religious, popular author of juvenile best-sellers. By telling the story of a horse's life in the form of an autobiography and describing the world through the eyes of the horse, Anna Sewell broke new literary ground.[3]

Sewell said that her purpose in writing the novel was "to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses"[1]—an influence she attributed to an essay on animals she read earlier by Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) entitled "Essay on Animals".[4] Her sympathetic portrayal of the plight of working animals led to a vast outpouring of concern for animal welfare and is said to have been instrumental in abolishing the cruel practice of using the checkrein (or "bearing rein", a strap used to keep horses' heads high, fashionable in Victorian England but painful and damaging to a horse's neck).[3] Black Beauty also contains two pages about the use of blinders (calling them blinkers) on horses, concluding that this use is likely to cause accidents at night due to interference with "the full use of" a horse's ability to "see much better in the dark than men can."

"There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham."

—Black Beauty, Chapter 13, last paragraph.

The book describes conditions among London horse-drawn taxicab drivers, including the financial hardship caused to them by high licence fees and low legally-fixed fares. A page footnote in some editions says that soon after the book was published, the difference between 6-day taxicab licences (not allowed to trade on Sundays) and 7-day taxicab licences (allowed to trade on Sundays) was abolished and the taxicab licence fee was much reduced.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Horses

  • Black Beauty/Black Auster/Jack/Darkie—The narrator of the story, a handsome black horse. He begins his career as a carriage horse for wealthy people but when he "breaks his knees" (i.e. develops scars on his "knees"--anatomically, wrists—after a bad fall) he is no longer considered presentable enough and is put to much harder work. He passes through the hands of a series of owners, some cruel, some kind. He always tries his best to serve humans despite the circumstance.
  • Duchess/Pet—Beauty's mother, who encourages Beauty to be good from a young age.
  • Rob Roy—A fellow black horse from Beauty's original farm. We later learn that he was Beauty's half-brother, an older son of Duchess.
  • Lizzie— A highly-strung nervous mare who Lady Anne rides one day and is spooked until Black Beauty comes to her aid with his rider.
  • Ginger—Named for her chestnut colour and her habit of biting, which is often how the spice, ginger, is described. Ginger is a more aggressive horse due to her traumatic upbringing.
  • Merrylegs—A short, handsome pony who is polite to humans and horses alike.
  • Sir Oliver—An older horse who had his tail docked to his great annoyance and discomfort.
  • Rory—A job horse who usually got paired up with Black Beauty. Became a coal carting horse after getting hit in the chest by a runaway cart.
  • Peggy—A hired horse who cannot run so fast due to her short legs.
  • Captain—A former army horse who witnessed horrific incidents in the Crimean War, although he was well treated and received no wounds. He lost his beloved master in the Charge of the Light Brigade.He was a cab horse for Jerry also.
  • Hotspur—A five year old horse bought to replace Captain.
  • Justice—A calm, peaceable horse Beauty meets at Birtwick Park.

[edit] Beauty's owners

This copy of the first edition of the book was dedicated by the author to her mother. It was auctioned off at Christie's in London in June 2006 for £33,000.
  • Farmer Grey—Beauty's first owner, a good kind man who trains him well.
  • Squire Gordon—owner of Birtwick Park, a fine rider, and boss of John, James, and Joe.
  • John Manly—A coachman who treats his horses with care and respect.
  • James Howard—John's stable boy.
  • Joe Green—John's younger and less experienced stable boy who replaces James.
  • Earl of W-—An unnamed Lord who uses Black Beauty as a carriage horse.
  • Reuben Smith—A handsome and charming young man whose downfall is caused by his alcoholism. He injures Black Beauty badly by riding him too hard while drunk.
  • Mr. Barry—A man who tries to treat horses well, but lacks knowledge on horse care.
  • Filcher—Barry's horse groomer who steals food from the stable (Note: 'to filch' means 'to steal').
  • Jerry—A kind owner who uses Beauty as a cab horse. AKA Jeremiah Barker. Also owner of Captain and Hotspur.
  • Jakes—An owner who uses Beauty as a work horse, forcing him to carry heavy loads.
  • Nicholas Skinner—A ruthless cab horse owner who wears out horses through hard work and mistreatment.
  • Farmer Thoroughgood—A kind owner who cares for Black Beauty when he is at his weakest.
  • The three ladies—His final home were he spent the rest of his days very well treated.

[edit] Film adaptations

The book has been adapted into film and television several times, including:

[edit] Influence upon other works

  • Beautiful Joe was a best-selling 1893 novel about a dog that was directly influenced by Black Beauty and followed a similar path to fame through awareness of cruelty to animals.
  • Strike at Shane's: A Prize Story of Indiana is an anonymous American novel that won a monetary award and national publication in 1893 in a contest sponsored by the American Humane Society, and was reprinted several times commercially thereafter. Described in the introduction as a "Sequel to Black Beauty, it tells the story of good and bad treatment of farm animals and local wildlife, especially songbirds, in the American Midwest. The novel is generally attributed as the first published work of the novelist Gene Stratton Porter, and bears a remarkable textual similarity to her other books.
  • Phyllis Briggs wrote a sequel called Son of Black Beauty, published in 1950.
  • The Pullein-Thompson sisters wrote several stories concerning relatives of Black Beauty. They are Black Ebony (1975; by Josephine), Black Velvet (1975; by Christine), Black Princess (1975; by Diana), Black Nightshade (1978; by Josephine), Black Romany (1978; by Diana), Blossom (1978; by Christine), Black Piper (1982; by Diana), Black Raven (1982; by Josephine) and Black Pioneer (1982; by Christine). The book Black Swift (1991) by Josephine is not about a Black Beauty relative. These were published in several compilations as well as some of them being available separately. Each compilation was subsequently republished, sometimes with a change of name.
  • Spike Milligan wrote a parody of the novel called Black Beauty According to Spike Milligan (1996).

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster (1995). "Black Beauty". Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature.
  2. ^ The Literature Police Accessed 2009-06-28
  3. ^ a b Anna Sewell, by Prof. Waller Hastings, Northern State University, 2004. Archive.org copy.
  4. ^ Gentle Heart: The Story of Anna Sewell, by Jen Longshaw.

[edit] External links

Wikisource
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
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