<P> Anna Sewell never married or had children . In visits to European spas, she met many writers, artists, and philanthropists . Her only book was Black Beauty, written between 1871 and 1877 in her house at Old Catton . During this time, her health was declining, and she could barely get out of bed . Her dearly - loved mother often had to help her in her illness . She sold the book to the local publishers, Jarrold & Sons . The book broke records for sales and is the "sixth best seller in the English language ." By telling the story of a horse's life in the form of an autobiography and describing the world through the eyes of the horse, Anna Sewell broke new literary ground . </P> <P> Sewell died of hepatitis or tuberculosis on 25 April 1878, only five months after the novel was published, but she lived long enough to see its initial success . She was buried on 30 April 1878 in the Quaker burial - ground at Lammas near Buxton, Norfolk, where a wall plaque marks her resting place . Her birthplace in Church Plain, Great Yarmouth, is now a museum . </P> <P> Sewell did not write the novel for children . She said that her purpose in writing the novel was "to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses"--an influence she attributed to an essay on animals she read earlier by Horace Bushnell (1802--1876) entitled "Essay on Animals". Her sympathetic portrayal of the plight of working animals led to a vast outpouring of concern for animal welfare and is said to have been instrumental in the abolition of the cruel practice of using the checkrein (or "bearing rein", a strap used to keep horses' heads high, fashionable in Victorian England but painful and damaging to a horse's neck). Black Beauty also mentions the use of blinkers on horses, concluding that this use is likely to cause accidents at night due to interference with "the full use of" a horse's ability to "see much better in the dark than men can ." </P> <P> 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 . </P>

Character sketch of black beauty by anna sewell