Black Beauty

Written by Anna Sewell

Narrated by Cori Samuel

Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed 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 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parolita Libro
• Release date: May 1, 2022

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.