Anna Sewell (1820–1878) was an English writer who published only one book, Black Beauty (1877), the autobiography of a horse. Written to encourage kindness to horses, it became one of the best-selling books in the world.
An accident
Anna Sewell was born on 30 March 1820 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, into a Quaker family. Her mother, Mary Wright Sewell, was a successful author of moral verse for children.
At fourteen, running home from school in the rain, she fell and badly injured both ankles. For the rest of her life she could hardly walk, and depended on horse-drawn carriages, often driving a pony carriage herself.
Love of horses
Through her dependence on horses, Anna Sewell came to know them intimately and to be distressed by the cruelty she saw in their treatment, especially the use of the bearing rein, which forced horses to hold their heads high.
She lived with her parents in Sussex, near Bath and finally at Old Catton, near Norwich, helping her mother with her work.
Black Beauty
Confined to her sofa by illness from 1871, she wrote Black Beauty over six years, dictating to her mother or writing on scraps of paper. The book was sold to the Norwich publisher Jarrold and Sons for twenty pounds and published in November 1877.
Anna Sewell died on 25 April 1878, five months later, just long enough to know of its first success.
Anecdotes
Twenty pounds
Anna Sewell received a single payment of twenty pounds for Black Beauty. She never shared in the profits of a book that sold millions of copies.
Distributed to cab drivers
Animal welfare societies distributed Black Beauty to cab drivers and stable workers. In the United States, the reformer George Angell had hundreds of thousands of copies printed in 1890.
Frequently asked questions
Who tells the story of Black Beauty?
Black Beauty himself, a horse, who tells his life from his happy youth to hard times as a London cab horse and back to a kind home.
Why did Anna Sewell write Black Beauty?
To encourage kindness and understanding towards horses, which she saw mistreated in her time.
Did Anna Sewell write other books?
No. Black Beauty was her only book.