When Black Beauty was still a colt, her mother called to her, and spoke to her. "Pay attention," mother said, "to what I tell you: The colts who live here are very good colts, but they are cart-horse colts and of course they have not learned manners. You have been well-bred and well-born; your father has a great name in these parts and your grandfather won the cup two years at the Newmarket races; your grandmother had the sweetest temper of any horse I ever knew and I think you have never seen me kick or bite. I hope you will grow up gentle and good and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot and never bite or kick even in play. . . ." They were words the horse was never to forget, no matter how far from that meadow the trail of her life led her -- and it led her very, ver far indeed.

Author Biography

Anna Sewell (1820 - 1878) was an English novelist. She is best known as the author of the 1877 novel Black Beauty, one of the top ten best selling novels for children ever written. Sewell wrote the manuscript of Black Beauty - in the period between 1871 and 1877. During this time her health was declining. She was often so weak that she was confined to her bed and writing was a challenge. She dictated the text to her mother and from 1876 began to write on slips of paper which her mother then transcribed. Although the book is now considered a children's classic, Sewell originally wrote it for those who worked with horses. She said "a special aim [was] to induce kindness, sympathy and an understanding treatment of horses." In many respects the book can be read as a guide to horse husbandry, stable management and humane training practices for colts. It is considered to have had an effect on reducing cruelty to horses; for example, the use of bearing reins, which are particularly painful for a horse, was one of the practices highlighted in the novel and in the years after the book's release the reins became less popular and fell out of favor. Sewell sold the novel to London publisher Jarrolds in 1877, when she was 57 years old. She received a single payment of GBP40 (GBP3,456 or US $4,630 in 2017) and the book was published the same year.