On this day in vegan history · April 25, 1878
Anna Sewell Dies Just as Black Beauty Takes Off
She wrote the whole novel from a sofa she could not leave, giving a cab horse a voice loud enough to help end a Victorian cruelty she could not stop any other way.
The facts
- Published
- November 24, 1877, by Jarrold & Sons, London
- Sewell died
- April 25, 1878, aged 58, five months after publication
- Confined
- To a bed or sofa from 1871 until her death
- Effect
- Reader outrage over the bearing rein scenes helped end its use in Victorian England
Anna Sewell had been mostly housebound since 1871, confined to a bed or sofa for the rest of her life. Sick and running out of time, she spent those years writing a novel narrated by a horse, dictating pages to her mother as her strength came and went. Jarrold & Sons published Black Beauty in November 1877. Sewell died five months later, on April 25, 1878, but she lived to see her only book selling well and already changing how readers thought about the animals pulling their cabs.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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I have for six years been confined to the house and to my sofa, and have from time to time, as I was able, been writing what I think will turn out a little book, its special aim being to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses.
Anna Sewell, explaining her purpose in writing Black Beauty
Source: Wikipedia -
the most influential anti-cruelty novel of all time
Bernard Unti, writing in the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, on Black Beauty
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Black Beauty made readers feel a horse's pain from the inside instead of arguing them into it, and it moved public opinion on everyday cruelty faster than any pamphlet had. It is still cited as proof that a story, told from the animal's own point of view, can do work that moral instruction cannot.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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