What a ride. No child can fail to laugh and cry in equal measure as they jump on for the ride of a lifetime with Black Beauty. His unbreakable spirit, strong will and determination to survive in spite of all that’s thrown at him is not to be missed. With an Introduction by bestselling novelist, Meg Rosoff, who discovered the novel at the age of 11 deep in the basement of the family home. She remembers with warmth Black Beauty’s dignified voice shining through on every page. It’s book that will satisfy a child’s hunger for horse books for he or she will want to read it over and over again until as meg says, she could ‘recite whole scenes’. This terrific pocket size Puffin Classics edition there’s lots of additional material at the end of the book including an author profile, a guide to who’s who in Black Beauty plus many related activities to do beyond the book.
Continuously in print and translated into multiple languages since it was first published, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty is a classic work of children’s literature and an important text in the fields of Victorian studies and animal studies. Writing to “induce kindness, sympathy and an understanding treatment of horses,” Sewell realistically documents the working conditions of Black Beauty, who moves down the social scale from a rural carriage horse to a delivery horse in London. Sewell makes visible and tangible the experience of animals who were often treated as if they were machines. Though she died shortly after it was published, Sewell’s book contributed significantly to late nineteenth-century campaigns for humane treatment of horses and remains a seminal anti-cruelty text today. The Broadview Press edition reproduces the first edition of 1877, restoring material often abridged in other modern editions. Appendices include materials on contemporary animal-rights movements, “equine management,” and Victorian understandings of animal emotions.