Black Beauty
1877
Black Beauty
1877
Told from the stable to the slaughterhouse, from a meadow of wild grass to the streets of Victorian London, Black Beauty narrates his own life with quiet dignity and accumulating heartbreak. Born to a beloved mother who teaches him that 'the rein is held by a kind hand,' the young colt begins in paradise. But when financial ruin forces his first sale, he enters a world where horses are tools, where bearing bits and bearing grief become indistinguishable. Anna Sewell wrote this novel in her deathbed, too ill to stand, pouring her moral passion into every page. The result is neither sentimental nor preachy. It's something more radical: a creature's eye view of humanity, showing us who we are when no one is watching the horses. The cruelty is specific and searing. The kindness is rare and hard-won. More than fifty million readers later, the book still works its quiet magic: it makes you see the pulling creatures at the roadside, the laboring animals in the rain, and wonder what they would say if they could.
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“It is good people who make good places.””
— Anna Sewell
“If they strain me up tight, why, let 'em look out! I can't bear it, and I won't.””
— Anna Sewell
“We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.””
— Anna Sewell
“There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham - all a sham, James, and it won't stand when things come to be turned inside out and put down for what they””
— Anna Sewell
“Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?... It is because people think only about their own business, and won't trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doers to light... My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.””
— Anna Sewell
“My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my old friends under the apple trees.””
— Anna Sewell
“My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.””
— Anna Sewell
“If a thing is right it can be done, and if it is wrong it can be done without; and a good man will find a way.””
— Anna Sewell
“Only ignorance! only ignorance! how can you talk about only ignorance? Don't you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness? -- and which does the most mischief heaven only knows. If people can say, 'Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm,' they think it is all right.””
— Anna Sewell
