Black Beauty

Written by Anna Sewell

Narrated by Jeff Harding

Black Beauty is a novel by English author Anna Sewell written around 1877. The story is told in the first person and is a fictional autobiographical memoir told from the perspective of a horse named Black Beauty. The story follow this horse's life, from his young days on an English farm with his mother, to the more dreadful years of pulling cabs in London, and ending with his happy retirement in the country. The book at the time of its publication somewhat inadvertently helped gain justice for mistreated animals (specifically horses) in the London cab industry, as well as to help those cab drivers combat unfair government regulations. It has sold over 50 million copies making it one of the best-selling books of all time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamscape Media
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781666586336

Anna Sewell

Anna Sewell was born in 1820 into a Quaker family whose respect for horses was out of step with the common view of the time, that animals should be worked until they dropped. Disabled in a fall aged 14, Anna lived all her life with her parents but became an expert carriage driver and, as editor and stern critic, helped her mother, Mary Wright Sewell, become a successful author of evangelical children's books. Anna wrote Black Beauty, her only book, in the last years of her life, as a plea for more humane treatment of horses. She died in 1878, a year after the novel was published to wide acclaim.