Black Beauty (Dramatic Reading)

Black Beauty is a fictional autobiographical memoir told by a horse, who recounts many tales, both of cruelty and kindness. The title page of the first edition states that it was "Translated from the Original Equine by Anna Sewell." After its publication in 1877, Sewell lived just long enough to see her first and only novel become an immediate bestseller, as well as it encouraging the better treatment of many cruelly-treated animals.

Although initially intended for people who work with horses, it soon became a children's classic. While outwardly teaching animal welfare, it also contains allegorical lessons about how to treat people with kindness, sympathy and respect. The story is narrated in the first person and each short chapter relates an incident in Black Beauty's life, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude.

By : Anna Sewell (1820 - 1878)

00 - Dramatis Personae



01 - My Early Home



02 - The Hunt



03 - My Breaking In



04 - Birtwick Park



05 - A Fair Start



06 - Liberty



07 - Ginger



08 - Ginger's Story Continued



09 - Merrylegs



10 - A Talk in the Orchard



11 - Plain Speaking



12 - A Stormy Day



13 - The Devil's Trade Mark



14 - James Howard



15 - The Old Ostler



16 - The Fire



17 - John Manly's Talk



18 - Going for the Doctor



19 - Only Ignorance



20 - Joe Green



21 - The Parting



22 - Earlshall



23 - A Strike for Liberty



24 - The Lady Anne, or a Runaway Horse



25 - Reuben Smith



26 - How it Ended



27 - Ruined and Going Downhill



28 - A Job Horse and His Drivers



29 - Cockneys



30 - A Thief



31 - A Humbug



32 - A Horse Fair



33 - A London Cab Horse



34 - An Old War Horse



35 - Jerry Barker



36 - The Sunday Cab



37 - The Golden Rule



38 - Dolly and a Real Gentleman



39 - Seedy Sam



40 - Poor Ginger



41 - The Butcher



42 - The Election



43 - A Friend in Need



44 - Old Captain and His Successor



45 - Jerry's New Year



46 - Jakes and the Lady



47 - Hard Times



48 - Farmer Thoroughgood and His Grandson Willie



49 - My Last Home


The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by the titular horse named Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude.

The book describes conditions among London horse-drawn taxicab drivers, including the financial hardship caused to them by high licence fees and low, legally fixed fares. A page footnote in some editions says that soon after the book was published, the difference between 6-day taxicab licences (not allowed to trade on Sundays) and 7-day taxicab licences (allowed to trade on Sundays) was abolished and the taxicab licence fee was much reduced.

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