Description

The First Edition in this format. With 18 very beautiful tipped-in colourplates by Cecil Aldin. 4to, publisher’s very handsome original dark blue cloth with fully gilt pictorially decorated upper cover featuring an all over image of a young horse with its mother in an idyllic English country setting, lettered and ruled in gilt on spine and cover. viii, 291 pp. An unusually bright and pleasing copy. The blue cloth clean and with vivid gilt, the hinges solid and firm, the text-block fresh and in excellent condition. A lovely copy of this beloved book.

Edizione: a handsome and pleasing copy of this scarce wonderfully illustrated printing, one of the finest and most beautiful editions of black beauty that we know of. aldin’s colour plates are vivid and expressive, yet very natural. the binding is lovely and the presentation large and rich. <br> black beauty is the only book anna sewell ever wrote. it is a timeless story which relates events in the life of a horse which suffers great cruelty and despair but for whom there is the ultimate eventuality of a happy home. this novel became an immediate success and in its day caused the altering of human behaviour towards and treatment of domesticated animals. unfortunately anna sewell would never realize her dream of experiencing the changes she wrote and fought for as she died only a few months after the book’s publication having never received more then £20 for her literary efforts. the novel struck home in an immediate and especially meaningful way for animal lovers and for animal rights activists in their struggles for the humane treatment of animals. in the intervening years since its publication it has become a revered classic of the highest order . it has become known as “the uncle tom’s cabin of the horse”