Anna Sewell, March 30, 1820 - April 25, 1878 Anna Sewell was on March 30, 1820 in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. She was raised a Quaker by her father a bank manager and her mother, a children's novelist. At the age of fourteen, Sewell hurt her knee during a fall and the injury never healed right. Even though she could not walk well, she could still ride horses and drive a horse drawn buggy. It was this form of freedom that sparked her concern for the welfare of horses. She wrote "Black Beauty" when she was in her fifties, but died a year after it was published in 1877. While she never earned much from the book while she was alive, after her death, the novel snowballed into a something… extraordinary. The book was about the abuses horses sustained in their lifetimes, but was told from the unique viewpoint of the horse. Even though the book was intended for children, it impacted all generations and caused everyone who read it to take a look at the inhumane treatment horses received. In the one hundred plus years since "Black Beauty" had been published, over 30 million copies have been printed. At least eight motion pictures have been made based on the novel and it is a well known children's classic. Anna Sewell died on April 25, 1878 in Old Catton, Norfolk.
ADRIENNE E. GAVIN is a Reader in English at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. Her publications include Dark Horse: A Life of Anna Sewell (2004) and critical editions of Caroline Clive's Paul Ferroll (2008), Henry de Vere Stacpoole's The Blue Lagoon (2010), and C. L. Pirkis's The Experiences of Loveday Brooke , Lady Detective (2010). She is co-editor of Mystery in Children's Literature (2001) and Childhood in Edwardian Fiction (2009). nbsp; CAROLYN OULTON is a Reader in Victorian Literature at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. Her publications include: Literature and Religion in Mid-Victorian England: from Dickens to Eliot (Palgrave Macmillan 2003), Romantic Friendship in… Victorian Literature (Ashgate 2007) and Let The Flowers Go: a Life of Mary Cholmondeley (Pickering & Chatto 2009). She is the co-editor of Mary Cholmondeley Reconsidered (Pickering & Chatto 2009).