Flashback Friday

Flashback Friday!

I haven't done a book review in a while, but I decided to do another classic. This one is even older than the last, having been published in 1877. It was written by Anna Sewell and was published only five months before her death, but quickly became a best seller and is still one of the best selling books of all time.

Summary of the story:

"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." - Wikipedia

My review:

The whole point of the book was to "to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses," which I think it does pretty well. I read this book when I was fairly young, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a brilliantly written novel that invokes a lot of sympathy in the reader, especially when it comes to some scenes where they describe animal cruelty towards Black Beauty and other horses. This book was a very influential part in the anti-cruelty campaigns going on at the time, and even to this day is often referenced when it comes to cruelty towards horses. I think this is an amazing book that everyone should read, whether or not you like reading, care about horses or about animals in general, I think everyone should read it. It's not overly complicated and it paints a vivid image in your mind, which I think is one of the many things that make this book so amazing to read.

If you haven't read Black Beauty already, I really think you should! Are there any other classic fans out there?

~The Elf