Anna Sewell

Black Beauty

Black Beauty is a 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 best-seller, with Sewell dying just five months after its publication, but having lived long enough to see her 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. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 58 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by the titular 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, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude. The book describes conditions among London horse-drawn taxicab drivers, including the financial hardship caused to them by high licence fees and low, legally fixed fares. A page footnote in some editions says that soon after the book was published, the difference between 6-day taxicab licences (not allowed to trade on Sundays) and 7-day taxicab licences (allowed to trade on Sundays) was abolished and the taxicab licence fee was much reduced.
190 printed pages
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Impressions

  • Aizat Ismailshared an impression7 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    💡Learnt A Lot

    I'm kazak girl (Kazakhstan).And I learning English for myself.It was my first book in English.Book just great.Thank you very much 😻✋🏻

  • Katelyn Leahshared an impression5 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    🔮Hidden Depths
    🎯Worthwhile
    🌴Beach Bag Book
    🚀Unputdownable

    Amazing such a good book to read worthwhile could take it anywhere cant put it down once reading and love the hidden depths

  • b8995013820shared an impression5 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    🔮Hidden Depths
    💡Learnt A Lot

    Очень понравилось, можно узнать много полезного,всем советую.)

Quotes

  • Loonhas quoted2 years ago
    ‘a bad-tempered man will never make a good-tempered horse
  • b5682007658has quoted4 years ago
    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.”
  • Renata Korniichukhas quoted2 years ago
    work with a good will

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