SEWELL, Anna (1820-1878). Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions. The Autobiography of a Horse, translated from the Original Equine. London: Jarrold and Sons, [1877].

First edition, presentation copy from the author's mother, and the book's dedicatee, Mary Wright Sewell. Black Beauty was the author's only published novel and a phenomenal success, still an all-time best-seller in the English language. It meaningfully led to the abolition of "bearing reins" which had been fashionable in Victorian England to hold horses' heads high. As a disabled person, Anna Sewell developed a close empathy with horses through her reliance on them for mobility. In the last years of her life, she was very ill and dictated much of this novel to her mother from bed. Her mother, was herself a published poet and best-selling author of juvenile literature. Both women were Quakers. The dedication of Black Beauty reads: "To my dear and honoured mother, whose life, no less than her pen, has been devoted to the welfare of others."

This book is inscribed by Mary Wright Sewell on the front free endpaper: "Harriett Ursinus from her sincere friend / Mary Sewell."

Octavo (170 x 100mm). With wood-engraved frontispiece. 8 pp. advertisements at end (some spots and scattered light stains, tender). Original blue cloth stamped in black and gold with a rustic frame and horse's head, as Carter's variant 'B' except the title in black not gilt, brown endpapers (hinges cracked, rubbed, spine ends and corners worn). Custom cloth box. Provenance: John M. Schiff (bookplate).