Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was written from a horse as main character's perspective. She wrote it in the last years of her life, during which she was bedridden and seriously ill. 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 over fifty million copies sold, Black Beauty is one of the best-selling books of all time.

While forthrightly teaching animal welfare, it also teaches how to treat people with kindness, sympathy, and respect. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 58 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. It is seen as a forerunner of the pony book genre.

Background

Anna Sewell was born in Great Yarmouth, England, and had a brother named Philip, who was an engineer in Europe. At the age of 14, Anna fell while walking home from school in the rain and injured both ankles. Through the mistreatment of the injury, she became unable to walk or stand for any length of time for the rest of her life. Disabled and unable to walk, she began learning about horses, spending many hours driving her father to and from the station from which he commuted to work. Her dependence on horse-drawn transportation fostered her respect for horses. 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.

Sewell died of hepatitis or tuberculosis on 25 April 1878, only five months after the novel was published, but she lived long enough to see its initial success.

Although Black Beauty is looked at as a children's novel, Sewell did not write the novel for children. She said that her purpose in writing the novel was "to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses" 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 the abolition of 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). Originally meant to be informative literature read by adults on the norms of horse cruelty and preventions of these unjust acts, Black Beauty is now seen as a children's book. Narrated by the main character, Black Beauty, the novel is read by thousands of children worldwide.

Analysis

Sewell uses anthropomorphism in Black Beauty. The text advocates the fairer treatment of horses in Victorian England. The story is narrated from Black Beauty's perspective and resultantly readers arguably gained insight into how horses suffered through their use by human beings with restrictive technical objects like the "bearing rein" and "blinkers" as well as procedures like cutting off the tails of the horses. For instance, Ginger describes the physical effects of the "bearing rein" to Black Beauty, by stating, "it is dreadful... your neck aching until you don't know how to bear it... its hurt my tongue and my jaw and the blood from my tongue covered the froth that kept flying from my lips". Tess Coslett highlights that Black Beauty's story is structured in a way that makes him similar to those he serves. The horses in the text have reactions as well as emotions and characteristics, like love and loyalty, which are similar to those of human beings. Coslett emphasizes that, while Black Beauty is not the first book written in the style of an animal autobiography, it is a novel that "allows the reader to slide in and out of horse-consciousness, blurring the human/animal divide". Dwyer suggests that  "by the end of the nineteenth century the concern for animal welfare was often mediated by considerations of utility", implying that these animals (horses) were seen to get the job done by any means rather than the approach that they could be demonizing the animal.

Publications

Published in 1877, in the last years of Anna Sewell's life, Black Beauty sold over 50 million copies worldwide in 50 different languages. This different viewpoint sparked people's interest to speak for horses' well-being and implement legislation. According to Sewell, providing information was her original goal of horse injustice. It has been alleged that Black Beauty was banned in some countries, e.g. South Africa, for containing the words "Black" and "Beauty" during its apartheid restrictions on African natives. However, Claire Datnow, in her memoir Behind the Walled Garden of Apartheid: Growing up White in Segregated South Africa, writes that this "fact" was a standing joke among her circle of friends, invented to make fun of the "ignorance of the censors"—the idea being that Black Beauty had been banned "because the censors thought it referred to a black woman."

Reception

Upon publication of the book, many readers related to the pain of the victimized horses, sympathized and ultimately wanted to see the introduction of reforms that would improve the well-being of horses. Two years after the release of the novel, one million copies of Black Beauty were in circulation in the United States. In addition, animal rights activists would habitually distribute copies of the novel to horse drivers and to people in stables. The depiction of the "bearing rein" in Black Beauty spurred so much outrage and empathy from readers that its use was not only abolished in Victorian England, but public interest in anti-cruelty legislation in the United States also grew significantly. The arguably detrimental social practices concerning the use of horses in Black Beauty inspired the development of legislation in various states that would condemn such abusive behaviours towards animals. The impact of the novel is still very much recognized today. Writing in the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, Bernard Unti calls Black Beauty "the most influential anti-cruelty novel of all time". Comparisons have also been made between Black Beauty and the most important social protest novel in the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, on account of the strong degree of outrage and protest action that both novels triggered in society.

  • Beyond Black Beauty, a streaming series for Amazon Freevee by Amazon Studios
  • Additionally, in 1966 Walt Disney Productions produced an LP adaptation on its Disneyland Records label with music by Disney's musical director at the time, Tutti Camarata, complete with narration and singing by Robie Lester similar to an old-time radio program. Disney never directly made an animated or live-action version, but they did finally purchase the distribution rights to the version listed above.

Theatrical adaptations

  • Black Beauty (1998), a musical adaptation with book and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein and music by Daniel Messé
  • Black Beauty Live (2011), adapted by James Stone and directed by Chris Ford

Black Beauty was adapted for the stage in 2011 by playwright James Stone. The play was performed at the Broughton Hall Estate, North Yorkshire and Epsom Racecourse, Surrey. The production was a critical success and was performed around the UK in 2012.

Influence upon other works

  • Beautiful Joe was a best-selling 1893 novel about a dog, which was directly influenced by Black Beauty and followed a similar path to fame through awareness of cruelty to animals.
  • The Strike at Shane's: A Prize Story of Indiana is an anonymous American novel which 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 America 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.
  • One of the most popular of the interwar pony stories for children, Moorland Mousie (1929), by "Golden Gorse" (Muriel Wace), is heavily influenced by Black Beauty.
  • 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).

See also

  • List of fictional horses
  • Sewell Park, Norwich

References

  • Black Beauty at the Internet Archive (scanned books; original editions; colour illustrated)

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  • Black Beauty, Penguin Readers Fact Sheet
  • Read more about the history of the pony story ()