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How ‘Black Beauty’ Was Written and Changed History
The story of how one of the most popular books ever published came to be
Black Beauty generated a lot of excitement when it hit shelves on Nov. 24, 1877. After all, no one had written a book from an animal’s point-of-view before. But that’s what Anna Sewell did. Black Beauty is the story of a horse told from the horse’s perspective. It was a unique concept in the late-18th century.
That’s because, at that time, people viewed horses as machines. Horses transported people and cargo, fought wars, and plowed fields. The idea that horses felt pain or emotions was extraordinary to many in Western society. In short, few people thought about horses the way Anna Sewell did.
But Sewell’s viewpoint was different from a lot of peoples’ due to an ankle injury she sustained as a teenager. The damage was severe enough that Sewell had to rely on a horse-drawn cart for all her transportation. Through this dependency, Sewell thought of her horse as more than a piece of machinery. And she decided to tell a story that would help others see horses in a different light.
It took many years for Sewell to write that story. She did so by scribbling it on small scraps of paper or by dictating the manuscript to her mother, Mary Wright Sewell. Mary Wright was herself an author. She’d published a few books of poems and stories for children.
Mary Wright helped transcribe and edit her daughter, Anna’s, draft. But Anna wasn’t writing her story for children. She wanted to change how people viewed and treated horses. To have this impact, Anna knew she needed to reach adults.
‘Black Beauty’ makes an impact
Adults did read her tale when it came out. The book published with the title, Black Beauty, his grooms and companions; the autobiography of a horse, ‘Translated from the original equine by Anna Sewell.’. It’s the tale of a dark-colored horse’s experience throughout its lifetime.
The animal, Black Beauty, endures incidents of kindness and cruelty. At one point…
