Cover of Oxford Children's Classics

Oxford Children's Classics

by Anna Sewell

3.7
(253 ratings)
268 pages5Oxford University PressISBN 9780192789099
inspiringlightheartedmediumemotionalhopefulreflectiveemotionalreflectivelightheartedemotionalhopefulmediumdarkemotionalfunnyhopefulinformativeinspiringreflectivetenseAdventurousdarkmediumAdventurousmedium

About this book

“It is good people who make good places.” ― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty Black Beauty is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she remained in her house as an invalid. The novel became an immediate best-seller, with Sewell dying just five months after its publication, but long enough to see her only novel become a success. With fifty million copies sold, Black Beauty is one of the best-selling books of all time. While forthrightly teaching animal welfare, it also teaches how to treat people with kindness, sympathy, and respect. Black Beauty became a forerunner to the pony book genre of children's literature. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 58 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. Black Beauty spends his youth in a loving home, surrounded by friends and cared for by his owners. But when circumstances change, he learns that not all humans are so kind. Passed from hand to hand, Black Beauty witnesses love and cruelty, wealth and poverty, friendship and hardship . . . Will the handsome horse ever find a happy and lasting home? Carefully retold in clear contemporary language, and presented with delightful illustrations, these favorite classic stories capture the heart and imagination of young readers.

Publication Details

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Published
5
Pages
268
ISBN
9780192789099

About Anna Sewell

"Anna Sewell was born in 1820 and died in 1878. She was lame from childhood and spent most of her life as a semi-invalid living at Brighton where her father had a position as a Bank Manager. Her mother wrote several moral tales in verse for children. Anna wrote only one book, Black Beauty, which was published 1877, and which sold over 100,000 copies in the first twenty years. It has been translated into French, Italian, German and has been described as 'one of themost successful animal stories ever written." (Biographical note from <i>"Black Beauty"</i>, Blackie & Son Ltd., Glasgow, ca 1950s.) ---------- **Mary and Anna Sewell** ---------- **By Diana Kennedy** ---------- > *This article was originally published in the August 2001 edition of Soul > Search, the journal of The Sole > Society.* Both Mary Sewell nee Wright and her daughter Anna were authors. Mary, less well known today was a popular author of juvenile best sellers, writing stories with titles such as “Mother’s Last Words”, “Our Father’s Care” and “Thy Poor Brother”. Mary was a deeply religious woman, with a sensitive and artistic nature, who was until 1835 a Quaker. She was also a member of the Anti-Slavery Association. Her daughter Anna was the author of the well known children’s classic ‘Black Beauty’, a fictional autobiography of a thoroughbred horse. Her aim in writing the book was to “induce kindness, sympathy and an understanding treatment of horses”. The book has a strong moral purpose and is said to have been instrumental in the abolition of the cruel practice of using the checkrein . The book was recommended by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Mary Wright was born 6th April 1797 at Sutton, Suffolk, the daughter of John Wright a gentleman farmer and Ann nee Holmes. Ann was the daughter of John Holmes of Tivetshall, Norfolk. Mary Wright married Isaac Sewell on 15th June 1819 at Lamas, Norfolk after a five year courtship. Isaac was the youngest of t

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