While growing up in 19th century Victorian England, Anna and her mother Mary often saw people abusing their horses in the city and countryside. Horses were whipped brutally, underfed, asked to cart loads that were much too heavy and worked in sweltering heat, freezing cold, and driving rain and snow – often seven days a week, year after year - until they died from exhaustion. As a devout Quaker, such abuse was extremely distressing to Anna. They left her with a life-long fervor to right the wrongs done to those powerless and noble animals, which she loved so dearly.

          For Anna Sewell, the mistreatment of horses in England was, perhaps, best symbolized by the bearing rein, also known as a checkrein in the United States. Used on horse drawn carriages and carts, the bearing rein was connected from the animal’s bit to the harness. It kept a horse’s head high and gave the neck an unnatural graceful curve, having no purpose other than to improve the fashionable appearance of the animal.

          Sewell, whose memorable characters in Black Beauty spoke to each other about their joys and sufferings, wrote about the bearing rein early in her book. One day in Squire Gordon’s paddock, a spirited gray mare named Ginger told Black Beauty about her cruel experience years earlier with the dreaded bearing rein:

          Horses forced to use the bearing rein suffered serious respiratory problems, reduced vision and a loss of balance, often resulting in pain, illness and death. Anna Sewell hated the bearing rein and wanted the practice ended.

          Often Anna’s outrage and fiery temper led her to confront full-grown men from all walks of life and to admonish them on the use of the bearing rein. The reason for acting on such injustices was perhaps best articulated by one of her characters – a gentleman who intervened when he saw a carter brutally punish his horses with a whip and rein. “My doctrine is this,” said the gentleman to his friend, “that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.”

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          Afterwards, the Sewell’s rented a small house in the part of Hackney then known as Dalston, where Anna spent her childhood. It was in Hackney in 1822 that a son named Philip was born to Mary and Isaac. During that time, Isaac worked and traveled for a large Nottingham lace factory. At home, Mary taught Anna and Philip until they were old enough to go to the Hackney Grammar School.

          To pay for the children’s books, she wrote a reader called Walks with Mama. (Mary Sewell would go on to become a successful writer of verse and ballads.) With the three English pounds she was paid, Mary bought a book authored by Richard Lovell Edgeworth titled Practical Education. The stories taught Anna and Philip the virtues of honesty, industry, thrift, self-reliance, and self-denial. Mary also instilled in them qualities she practiced - self-sacrifice and helping the poor. Anna and Philip were also taught to be kind to animals, an important article of the Quaker code.

          Anna was a pretty child with dark curly hair. Brought up as a strict Quaker, she dressed in the appropriate attire, including a long gown and bonnet. At an early age she showed artistic talent and a gift for languages. Then one day at the age of fourteen, Anna had an accident which changed her life forever.

          Coming home from school, Anna was caught in a heavy rain storm without an umbrella. While running up the sloping carriage drive leading to her house, she fell and twisted her ankles so badly she could not stand. Hearing her cry for help, Mary ran out of the house and saw her daughter lying in the mud outside the gate. She picked Anna up and carried her inside.

          Anna Sewell’s ankles never healed, and for the rest of her life, she was a semi-invalid, who never married and lived at home. Although lame, Anna had periods where she could walk with less difficultly and even traveled to Germany to visit the mineral spas, which helped her health temporarily. After moving to Lancing from Brighton in 1845, Anna’s health deteriorated and she had more difficulty walking. Driving a pony and chaise to get around, she soon learned to understand the nature and habits of her horse.

          In the summer of 1862, Mrs. Bayly, a friend of the family visited the Sewells. On the day she left it was raining, and Anna drove her to the train station. Mrs. Bayly observed Anna’s keen understanding and kindness toward her horse. She saw how Anna talked and controlled the animal with her voice alone by telling him, “Now thee shouldn’t walk up this hill – don’t thee see how it rains?” or “Now thee must go a little faster – thee would be sorry for us to be late at the station.” Mrs. Bayly also saw how she drove holding the reins in her hands loosely and never used a whip.

          On the way to the station, Mrs. Bayly told Anna about the writings of Horace Bushnell – an American theologian - who wrote Essay on Animals. After the publication of Black Beauty, Mrs. Bayly received a note from Anna: “The thoughts you gave me from Horace Bushnell years ago have followed me entirely through the writing of my book, and have, more than anything else, helped me to feel it was worth a great effort to try, at least, to bring the thoughts of men in harmony with the purposes of God on this subject.”

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At the age of fifty-one Anna Sewell was struck by a disease, the exact nature of which has never been determined. Poor health confined Anna to her home where she rested on the sofa most of the day. An entry in Anna’s diary for November 6, 1871 showed she had begun Black Beauty. Sewell wrote: “I am writing the life of a horse and getting dolls and boxes ready for Christmas.” Over the next five years, except from time to time when a few portions were dictated to her mother, Anna’s poor health did not allow her to read or write. Mary wrote: “Years went on, and no progress was made, except in her mind, where many pictures were clearly drawn and stored away in her memory.”

          When Anna’s health improved somewhat, she wrote more often. Mary afterwards took her writing and copied it. At other times, when Anna was not well enough to write, she told her tale to her mother, who wrote it down. The next entry in Anna’s diary about the book appeared on December 6, 1876 - less than two years before her death. She wrote, “I am getting on with my little book, ‘Black Beauty’.”

          Foremost, Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty as a primer on what to do and what not to do in caring for a horse. However, its charm and its appeal was the story. Black Beauty opened with the horse recalling his early home, a place of tranquility and comfort. At four years of age, the horse was sold beginning a life’s journey of good and bad times, depending on the temperament of his owner.

          There were good and caring people such as the master, the Squire and Mrs. Gordon of Birtwick Park, the coachman John Manley and stable boy James Howard, the London cab driver Jerry Barker and his wife and children, farmer Thoroughgood and his grandson Willie and the Blomefield sisters. There are also the cruel owners, who because of ignorance, ill temper, alcohol, or neglect caused Black Beauty pain, serious injury or near death - people like Lady Earlshall, Reuben Smith, Albert Smirk and Nicholas Skinner.

          Capturing the imagination of children and adults for generations, the novel presented many dramatic and unforgettable scenes. There was the excitement of the moonlight gallop to fetch the doctor for the Squire’s wife, the story of the flooded bridge, the fire in the stables at the coach’s inn, and the sad and tragic encounter years later between Black Beauty and Ginger as lowly cab horses in the drab streets of London.

*

          The first edition was bound in red, blue or green cloth. A drawing of a horse’s head with bridle and rein adorned the center. The title Black Beauty in capitals appeared above the horse’s head. A trellis in black bordered each side of the cover. Climbing up the trellis was a golden oat plant. The title page read:

Black Beauty
His grooms and companions
The autobiography of a horse
Translated from the original equine
By Anna Sewell

          Black Beauty was an instant success. Anna received many letters from readers. One letter from Norwich dated December 24, 1877 read: “. . . One cannot think how you could ever write such an Equestrian story. One would think you had been a horse-dealer, or a groom, or a jockey all your life. . . .You have so filled my mind with the thought of what these poor animals suffer from the bearing-rein, that I feel quite breathless as I look at some of them, and only my sex, and fear of the police, prevent my cutting the leathers and setting them free . . . . May it circulate widely, and may many a neglected Black Beauty find a resting-place in the kind consideration of some happy home.”

          Another letter from Torquay dated January 18, 1878 read: “. . . As an imaginary entrance into and mastery of horse nature, it is extremely clever, - as a story it is thoroughly well planned and told; and last, it must do good among all, high and low, who have the care of these noble creatures. . . . It made me cry more than twice or thrice. . .”

          Anna Sewell’s death came five months after the publication of Black Beauty. After a long night of painful breathing and incessant coughing, her mother Mary and brother Philip were called by the nurse to Anna’s bedside in the early morning hours of April 25, 1878. When the end was near, Philip offered final prays. Mary Sewell describes Anna’s final moments: “Then in a clear voice she said, ‘I am quite ready.’ Her eyes sought me again. I laid my cheek on hers; a few more long-drawn breaths and she left me behind. The angel had gone out of the house, and left a void never to be filled . . . .”

          On the day of Anna’s burial in the family plot at Lammas in Norfolk, Mary Sewell looked out of the window of the upstairs drawing room as the horse-drawn funeral hearse drew up to the door. Her friend and neighbor Mrs. Buxton was present. Appalled by what she saw, Mrs. Sewell exclaimed, “Oh this will never do!” and ran down the stairs and out of the house, ordering the carriage driver to remove the bearing reins from all the horses in the cortege.

*

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Black Beauty came to the attention of George T. Angell, the founder of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. So important was Black Beauty to Angell and his fellow pro-animal activists that one million copies of the book were circulated in the United States within two years of its appearance on April 1, 1890. Over the next twenty years, Black Beauty sold at the rate of a quarter-million books a year in America.

          Today, one hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Black Beauty, Anna Sewell would have been very pleased to know her “little book” became the most beloved children’s animal story of all time. She would have been even happier to know Black Beauty led to the abolition of the bearing rein at the beginning of the twentieth century and to the humane treatment of horses in England and abroad through greater understanding, kindness, and compassion.

The End