Through its combination of technical details with the affective power of fiction, it influenced the abolition of the bearing rein and successfully pleaded for the kind treatment of horses. Anna Sewell's corollary desire to present the difficulties of cabmen in "a correct and telling manner" was realized when the book inspired London missionaries to establish cabmen's shelters providing systematic religious and temperance instruction. Although
Black Beauty was not intended strictly for a juvenile audience, it was used as a reading book in boys' schools, no doubt for its moral and instructional value. The book outlived its purported missionary intent, however, as its author had created a work of the imagination whose aspects gave it lasting appeal.
Anna Sewell was born into the Quaker home of Isaac and Mary Sewell on 30 March 1820 in Yarmouth, England. Isaac Sewell was an enterprising, if restless, businessman and banker whose financial misfortunes made for an itinerant family life for his wife and two children, Anna and Philip. Anna Sewell never married and, as was not uncommon for Victorian spinsters, never lived apart from her parents. As Isaac Sewell's salary did not afford formal education for both the Sewell children, Anna's early intellectual and moral training, until she reached the age of about twelve, took place under the tutelage of her resourceful and seemingly indefatigable mother.
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