Talk:Black Beauty

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 July 2020 and 10 August 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yasmin.Brennae. Peer reviewers: Benohara.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:51, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation needed:
"Black Beauty" is the primary title of a Miles Davis live record from 1970.
 * You can add that information on the existing disambiguation page: Black_Beauty_(disambiguation). GiuseppeMassimo (talk) 23:15, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Banned

 * It has been banned from certain places, probably for personifying an animal, which is against certain religions and beliefs.

Please say where it was banned from, and by whom; and which religions or beliefs it violated. Then put the "it has been banned" sentence back into the article. --Uncle Ed 16:03, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Even though it regularly gets on to banned books listings, it looks a trifle apocryphal. Many sources, including US university department sites, preface the usual claim - that it was banned because of the title in 1955 in South Africa - with "reportedly" . When a Times correspondent mentioned this story in 1961 (White Women In South Africa, The Times, Monday, Feb 20, 1961; pg. 13) it was soon followed by a retraction (The Times, Monday, Mar 06, 1961; pg. 8;) "This is not correct" (even so, the Times Diary opinion column repeated the story in 1968 and 1972). Tearlach 04:35, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

"banned in the USA"
In all of the USA? Or in some states at some times? Anthony Appleyard 05:37, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Film split
Disagree with proposal to split article. Unless the material is lengthy enough to warrant a split, it is more helpful to see it all in one article. -- Stbalbach 00:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. PrinceCharming 13:00, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Animated Black Beauty?
Wasn't there an animated film of Black Beauty I remember watching it as a child. Mizi 01:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There have been at least two animated adaptations, and probably more. 81.158.3.105 03:47, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Which one is exactly copied to real book? 2405:201:A418:F9C1:F9E8:AC36:180A:7E2 (talk) 08:50, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Its a great book!

Television series
LWT (London Weekend Television) produced a series, "The Adventures of Black Beauty" in 1972. It was one of the great television series loved by adults and children alike. Best of all was its theme music, in my view the best theme music of any television show in history. The music has entered the consciousness ofgenerations, with it played automatically for any images involving horses on British or Irish television. An amazing book, turned into an amazing television series, with an extraordinary theme music - quite a combination. FearÉIREANN \(caint) 20:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

==Blinders= In Chapter 10, A Talk in the Orchard, Black Beauty asks his companion horses "Can any one tell me the use of blinkers (blinders)?" and an excellent discussion occupies the last two pages of the chapter. At the time that I recently reread this book, I had been working on my own family history which included my grandmother being severely injured, before the days of automobiles, by her horses and wagon (including her) overturning at night due to missing the corner. That is, they went off the edge of the road in the dark when the horses turned too late at the corner. I questioned how that could happen when horses can see so well at night (as I knew from growing up on a farm). I believe that Anna Sewell provides the answer, namely, that horses do have good night vision but "that many an accident would never have happened if horses had had the full use of their eyes." The blinders do not obstruct horses' vision straight ahead, but still their vision IS interfered with -- why do we humans take this risk of causing such accidents (if we still do)? I should add that in my childhood in Minnesota our bridles did have blinders on them; perhaps no workhorse bridles were available without blinders. Black Beauty is set in England just prior to 1877 with blinders used on workhorses but not "on riding horses, especially on ladies' horses." The author further states that in some foreign countries all colts are broken in without blinkers. The web seems to have blinders on, on this topic: I did not find information about current usage of blinders around the world for workhorses or riding horses. Anyway, I feel that Anna Sewell answered my question -- she tells about a very similar accident. For7thGen (talk) 21:29, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

='Pony book'?=

I was very surprised to see Black Beauty referred to as a forerunner of the 'pony book' genre that became important in juvenile literature from the 1930s. This seems to me to be really misleading, and to trivialise the book. In fact, the reference cited itself implicitly rejects the connection. The comparison with Uncle Tom's Cabin, also made in the article, is far more germane than comparisons with novels for horse-loving children.

Anna Sewell's extraordinary book was not written for children, a fact correctly noted in the lead paragraph here. Though its simple style makes it easy for children to read, most of the themes are specifically targeted at adults, and concern not only cruelty to animals, but also issues such as employment law and the temperance movement, matters integral to the thinking of Victorian social reformers. From the early 19th century, these predominantly Nonconformist thinkers and activists campaigned against slavery and a wide range of the other social injustices and ills that they saw in the rigidly stratified society around them. Cruelty to animals was always one of their targets: the first formal legislation against the abuse of animals goes back in the UK to 1822 and 1835.

The novel remains unique, but if it belongs to a genre at all, then surely it is much closer to the Victorian 'Evangelical' fiction tradition, works like Jessica's First Prayer, than it is to 20th-century pony books for children. It is an improving moral tract in the form of a novel.

The author's Quaker sensibilities and her views about religion, warfare, politics, class and society are quite subtly conveyed, but they are part of the very fabric of the book: they are its raison d'être. Delicate understatement, employing a faux-naivety justified by the fact that the narrator is a horse, is typical: on the Crimean War:

'Do you know what they fought about?' said I.

'No', he said, 'that is more than a horse can understand, but the enemy must have been awfully wicked people, if it was right to go all that way over the sea on purpose to kill them.'

The 'pony book' genre is specifically targeted at young readers, and the protagonists are children and young adolescents who own horses and ride. Such books usually include a good deal of useful material about caring for horses and ponies, but none of those that I read in my youth dealt with anything remotely resembling the very serious social polemic of Black Beauty. If the original author of the article is reading this, would you mind if I removed the reference to pony books, or, better, explained briefly why this book does not belong to that genre? AgTigress (talk) 11:07, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * I notice the citation for "forerunner to the pony book" isn't really a reliable source in Wikipedia's terms. More particularly, it's asymmetric. A discussion of twentieth-century pony books briefly looks back to "Black Beauty", but we have no sources that think that remote realtive, twentieth-century pony books, particularly relevant to "Black Beauty". If it is indeed relevant, then per WP:LEDE it needs first to be in the body of the article before competing for a place in the lede. I'll remove it. On the other hand, we can't put an unsourced argument, even one as strong as the above; that would be WP:OR. NebY (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2015 (UTC)


 * That reflects my thoughts in a nutshell; AgTigress' comments strike me as being derived from genuinely educated insight on the topics at hand, but without appropriate sourcing I'm afraid it must go to waste (aside from our fortunate elucidation!). At the same time the previous genre label was clearly just as poorly sourced.  I should like to see if there isn't something in scholarship speaking as to the themes and literary context of the book though and wouldn't be surprised if many of Tigress' observations were borne out within them.  S n o w  talk 13:55, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 15 March 2017
I recently read the book Black Beauty and went to look on the Wiki page, and noticed that there is no mention of the horse Lady Bird, which is mentioned when Black Beauty is being purchased before going to his final home. I just wanted to point this out.Felicity The Cat (talk) 19:06, 15 March 2017 (UTC) Felicity The Cat (talk) 19:06, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.  JTP (talk • contribs) 22:43, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I assume it's a request to add the horse Lady Bird to the list of characters. This is the horse which Willie reminds Farmer Thoroughgood improved its value by rest and good treatment, and is given as an example of why he should buy Black Beauty.  2.31.128.220 (talk) 14:42, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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proposed changes to the article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Yasmin.Brennae/Black_Beauty/Bibliography (link to bibliography) The issues that I found in this article included not having information on other publications (such as movies, tv shows, podcasts, etc.), the genre of the book (though it is most likely already known it still should be included), and adding citations. While annotating this article I found there to be many grammatical errors: misspelling of words, punctuation errors, and incorrect sentence/paragraph placement. I hope to be able to fix these issues by the end of my research, allowing future readers to look at this article and find it as a credible source for such information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yasmin.Brennae (talk • contribs) 15:15, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Locked???
Really? This is such a controversial page it can't be edited by the hoi polloi? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.11.228.247 (talk) 05:02, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Add to Literary characters introduced in 1877
Black Beauty should be in the category. 2600:1012:B15D:B12E:4138:7E54:F322:569D (talk) 09:00, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Clarification needed
I'm not sure what is meant by "demonization" in the Arizona Quarterly citation at the end of Analysis. The sentence structure is also a bit odd. I only have access to the magazine in-library, can someone with easier access to this article refine this point? Publicly Visible (talk) 13:51, 24 September 2023 (UTC)