Black Beauty
EBM Publishing
Publication date: April 2012
Digital Book format: ePub (DRM-Free)
Written in 1877, Black Beauty continues to be a favorite of children worldwide, selling over 50 million copies. The story is narrated by Black Beauty as he recounts his “colthood,” growing up in London (where he pulled horse carriages) and finally being put out to pasture.
Black Beauty is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she remained in her house as an invalid.] The novel became an immediate bestseller, with Sewell dying just five months after its publication, long enough to see her first and 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. Black Beauty became a forerunner to the pony book genre of children's literature.
The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by a horse named Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses.
