Collection: Anna Sewell

Anna Sewell, 1820 to 1878, injured her ankles badly as a girl and was in poor health for the rest of her life, dependent on horses to get anywhere at all. That is where the book comes from. She wrote one book, it was published in 1877, and she died a few months later, with no idea what it would do.

Black Beauty is told by the horse. That decision is the whole achievement, because it puts the reader on the wrong end of the reins and leaves him there. Cruelty is shown as ordinary, which is worse than showing it as monstrous. Decency is shown as a choice some men simply make.

It changed how a whole country treated its animals. Proof that one story, told right, moves the world.