Black Beauty

Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse is an 1877 novel by the English author Anna Sewell, written from the perspective of the horse. She wrote it in the last years of her life, during which she was bedridden and seriously ill.

The novel became an immediate bestseller, and Sewell died five months after publication, having lived long enough to see her only book succeed. With over fifty million copies sold it is one of the best-selling books of all time. In 2003 it was listed at number fifty-eight on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

Its content is moral without being sentimental about the horse. Beauty is sold repeatedly, and each sale puts him with owners, grooms and neighbours who treat working animals differently, so the book's argument about welfare is made by the comparisons the reader is shown. While it teaches animal welfare it also teaches the treatment of people with kindness, sympathy and respect, which is why it is read as literature rather than only as a children's book. His life runs from an English country estate to the cobbled streets of a city, and the change of surroundings is what allows each owner and groom to be judged by behaviour rather than by description.