Black Beauty is Anna Mary Sewell's only…

Black Beauty is Anna Mary Sewell's only published work, written after she had moved to Old Catton, a village outside the city of Norwich in Norfolk, in 1871.

During this time her health has been declining.

She is often so weak that she is confined to her bed and writing is a challenge.

She dictates the text to her mother and from 1876 had begun to write on slips of paper which her mother then transcribes.

Sewell sells the novel to local publisher Jarrolds on November 24, 1877, when she is fifty-seven years of age.

Although it is now considered a children's classic, she originally wrote it for those who worked with horses.

The novel becomes an immediate bestseller, with Sewell dying just five months after its publication, long enough to see her first and 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 becomes a forerunner to the pony book genre of children's literature.

Sewell was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England into a devoutly Quaker family.

Her father was Isaac Phillip Sewell (1793–1879), and her mother, Mary Wright Sewell (1798–1884) was a successful author of children's books.

She had one sibling, a younger brother named Philip and was largely educated at home.

At the age of twelve, the family had moved to Stoke Newington, where Sewell attended school for the first time.

Two years later, however, she slipped while walking home from school and severely injured both of her ankles.

Her father took a job in Brighton in 1836, in the hope that the climate there would help to cure her.

Despite this, and most likely because of mistreatment of her injury, for the rest of her life Anna will be unable to stand without a crutch or to walk for any length of time.

For greater mobility, she frequently uses horse-drawn carriages, which contribute to her love of horses and concern for the humane treatment of animals.

At about this time, both Anna and her mother had left the Society of Friends to join the Church of England, though both remained active in evangelical circles.

Her mother expressed her religious faith most noticeably by authoring a series of evangelical children's books, which Anna helped to edit, though all the Sewells, and Mary Sewell's family, the Wrights, engaged in many other good works.

While seeking to improve her health in Europe, Sewell had encountered various writers, artists, and philosophers, to which her previous background had not exposed her.