Narrated in the first person by the horse himself, Black Beauty opens with a carefree colthood on an English farm under his mother Duchess, who teaches him to bear hardship without complaint. Broken in at four and sold to the kindly Squire Gordon of Birtwick Park, Beauty enjoys his happiest years alongside the gentle pony Merrylegs and the hot-tempered mare Ginger, whose early mistreatment has left her bitter.
When illness forces the Gordon family abroad, Beauty passes through a succession of owners of wildly varying character, from careless aristocrats to a brutal London cab trade that grinds down horse and driver alike. Each short chapter is effectively a self-contained episode, often centered on a single act of cruelty or kindness and the practical, unsentimental lesson it carries about how working animals should be treated.
Anna Sewell wrote the book in the last years of her life, between 1871 and 1877, while largely confined to her home by illness; it was her only novel and was published shortly before her death. Aimed originally at people who worked with horses rather than at children, it became one of the best-selling books in the English language and is widely credited with changing public attitudes toward the treatment of working animals.