Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty is credited with starting the pony genre of children's fiction. It's also credited with being the most influential anti-animal-cruelty novel ever written.
Black Beauty is the only horse/pony novel I've ever read, but it's one of the few books that has made me cry.
It's Anna Sewell's only book, written at the very end of her life (she survived publication by only five months, though that was enough to show that it was going to be an enormous and influential bestseller - it's now reckoned to be the world's sixth best-selling novel). Sewell was an invalid all her adult life, unable to walk any distance, and her dependence on horse-drawn transport formed the basis for her great respect for horses.
Is Black Beauty great literature?
Well, it's effective writing, and it's changed the way the world thinks, so I'd have to say yes, even though Anna Sewell's chief interest wasn't really in words:
'We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no voices.'
And no one could say she didn't argue her case beautifully.
Word To Use Today: dumb. This word hasn't changed since the years of Old English. Before that it might have had something to do with earlier Indo-European words for confusion, dizziness and mist.
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