On this day in vegan history · November 24, 1877
Black Beauty Is Published
A woman who could barely leave her sofa wrote the whole story from inside a horse's head, and it did more for horses than a century of pamphlets.
The facts
- Published
- 24 November 1877
- Written
- 1871 to 1877, at her house in Old Catton, Norfolk
- Sewell's death
- 25 April 1878, five months after publication
- Early sales
- 12,000 copies in its first year; over 100,000 in Britain by 1890
Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty between 1871 and 1877 at her house in Old Catton, Norfolk, dictating much of it in her later years as illness kept her housebound. The novel was published on 24 November 1877, narrated entirely by the horse himself, moving from a comfortable youth through a string of owners into hard use and cruelty on London's streets. Sewell had spent years watching carriage horses forced into the tight, arched 'bearing rein' that held their heads unnaturally high, and she built the book to make readers feel that cruelty from the animal's own point of view. She died five months after publication, just as the book was catching on, and never saw how large its reach would become.
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, describing her purpose in writing Black Beauty
Source: Wikipedia -
led to a vast outpouring of concern for animal welfare and is said to have been instrumental in the abolition of the cruel practice of using the checkrein (or 'bearing rein')
Wikipedia, on the novel's effect
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Black Beauty turned a working animal's suffering into something a reader could feel from the inside, and it helped end the bearing rein within a generation. It remains one of the best-selling books ever written, proof that a novel can move public opinion on animal cruelty faster than a decade of argument.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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