The intention of this Book Club is to explore creative writing with an East Anglian connection either through the author or by place and often by both. The club has a message board on the EDP website which can be most easily accessed by typing in http://new.edp24.co.uk/cs/forums/ into your internet browser. To reply to messages or post a new ‘thread’ you have to register. It takes a little getting used to but is easy once you’ve got the ‘knack’.
Last month I asked for suggestions for this month’s Book Club choice and two readers responded on the message board. I hope to eventually include all the books mentioned starting this month with a classic which was suggested by Kate Gardener. To give it its full title the book is Black Beauty, His Grooms and Companions – The Autobiography of a horse translated from the original equine by Anna Sewell and published by Jarrold in 1877. Anna’s story is well known but just in case you don’t know the book is a memoir told by a highbred horse, beginning with his days as a foal on a farm, moving on to his harder life pulling London cabs and then on to his rural retirement. He meets many hardships along the way and recounts them, in a way that provides moral lessons for the reader, and as such has become a children’s classic.
Apparently it wasn’t originally aimed at children though – instead, Sewell, wrote the book with people who work with horses in mind. Its lessons on improving animal welfare were certainly influential and the book is credited with having had a significant influence on how people treated animals in the late Victorian era.
I know that Kate who suggested the book has read it many times beginning with a copy she inherited in her childhood. The message board is ready and waiting for similar stories
Jeff
I hadn’t read Black Beauty before but can’t get over how modern the writing seems. I think if you didn’t know it was written in the nineteenth century it could easily have been written by any number of modern children’s writers. I’m sure many of them must have been influenced by the style and content. Am I wrong to think Michael Morpurgo etc?
I also like the fact that although the story was written to improve animal welfare it is really about how awful humans can behave generally and as with all good literature is as relevant today as it was when first written. A wonderful book for which the term classic is most appropriate.
Kate
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