Fiction · 1877
Black Beauty
A horse tells his own life. Black Beauty is broken in on Farmer Grey’s meadow and sold to Squire Gordon at Birtwick Park, and from there passes from hand to hand, down through job-masters and the cab ranks of London — each owner a lesson in how animals are treated by people who are themselves being worked too hard.
Anna Sewell wrote it as an invalid, in the last years of her life, and published it in November 1877, five months before her death; it is the only book she wrote. She meant it, she said, “to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses”, and it is credited with helping to end the use of the bearing rein in England.
The four parts and forty-nine chapters are given complete.
Contents
- Dedication
- Part I
- 1 — My Early Home
- 2 — The Hunt
- 3 — My Breaking In
- 4 — Birtwick Park
- 5 — A Fair Start
- 6 — Liberty
- 7 — Ginger
- 8 — Ginger’s Story Continued
- 9 — Merrylegs
- 10 — A Talk in the Orchard
- 11 — Plain Speaking
- 12 — A Stormy Day
- 13 — The Devil’s Trade Mark
- 14 — James Howard
- 15 — The Old Hostler
- 16 — The Fire
- 17 — John Manly’s Talk
- 18 — Going for the Doctor
- 19 — Only Ignorance
- 20 — Joe Green
- 21 — The Parting
- Part II
- 22 — Earlshall
- 23 — A Strike for Liberty
- 24 — The Lady Anne, or a Runaway Horse
- 25 — Reuben Smith
- 26 — How it Ended
- 27 — Ruined and Going Downhill
- 28 — A Job Horse and His Drivers
- 29 — Cockneys
- 30 — A Thief
- 31 — A Humbug
- Part III
- 32 — A Horse Fair
- 33 — A London Cab Horse
- 34 — An Old War Horse
- 35 — Jerry Barker
- 36 — The Sunday Cab
- 37 — The Golden Rule
- 38 — Dolly and a Real Gentleman
- 39 — Seedy Sam
- 40 — Poor Ginger
- 41 — The Butcher
- 42 — The Election
- 43 — A Friend in Need
- 44 — Old Captain and His Successor
- 45 — Jerry’s New Year
- Part IV
- 46 — Jakes and the Lady
- 47 — Hard Times
- 48 — Farmer Thoroughgood and His Grandson Willie
- 49 — My Last Home
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Subjects
About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of Short Classics.
Source mind
About the author
1820–1878 · Victorian
Anna Sewell (1820–1878) was born in Great Yarmouth into a Quaker family; an injury at fourteen left her lame for life, and she depended on horses and carriages to get about. Black Beauty, her only book, was written in the last years of her life, when she was an invalid, and published in November 1877; she died five months later.
Adjacent records
