Let none of your own species excel you in any amiable quality, for want of your
endeavours to equal the best; and do your duty in every relation of life, as we have
done ours by you. To the gay scenes of levity and dissipation prefer a calm
retirement, for this is the greatest degree of happiness to be found.
Avery 1975:50It is interesting that one of the most famous exponents of the animal story, Beatrix
Potter, encountered Fabulous Histories in her youth and described it as a ‘stodgy fat
book’ which she hated.
Other books of this period contained animals as important elements. Dorothy Kilner’s
The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse (1783) is light years away from Mrs Trimmer’s
moralising. Master Nimble the mouse does comment on human foibles in his journey, it
must be admitted, but he remains a mouse, raiding larders and eating the food of both
rich and poor alike. The whole spirit of the book is akin to later works in this field, most
notably from writers like Beatrix Potter and Dick King-Smith.
Further stories about animals continued to be published into the next century: they
were normally dressed up as a moral fable. Titles like The Rambles of a Butterfly (1819),
The Adventures of Poor Puss (1809) and Further Adventures of Jemmy Donkey;
interspersed with biographical sketches of the Horse (1821) demonstrate this. The
popular writer A.L.O.E [‘A Lady of England’, Charlotte Maria Tucker] produced The
Rambles of a Rat (1857), in which the humanised rats Ratto, Whiskerandos and Oddity
tell their stories which are interspersed with an examination of human eccentricities.
However, a subtle difference emerged during the Victorian period in the attitude of
these books to animals. The Victorians were probably the first real animal-loving
generation in Britain and in their writings only the ignorant or ill-educated were shown
abusing animals. The culmination of this attitude was shown in the first major
children’s book about animals, Black Beauty (1877).
Anna Sewell’s book is still in print in several editions. Often it is abridged and the
more moralising aspects of the story are cut but its message remains undiluted.
Margaret Blount (1974:249) describes it as ‘perhaps the last of the moral tales, the last
great first person narrative in the listen-to-my-life style’. It was Anna Sewell’s only book
(although her mother had written many moral tracts and fables), written in the later
years of her life as a semi-invalid. Its major theme is kindness to horses and although
much of the story is not relevant today (transport has been superseded by less stately
methods), it can still be read for its compassion (the author also condemns war and fox
hunting), for the power of the narrative voice and for the almost folktale-like plot. The
narrative voice is, of course, human which may make it more easy for reader
identification. Black Beauty, although well born, descends to becoming a London cab
horse by falling into bad hands. His rescue and his return to happiness and security
through the offices of Joe, previously a stable lad, introduce the reader to a colourful
array of characters, both human (good and bad: the kindly Jerry Barker to the drunken
Reuben Smith) and animal (Peggy, Captain, Lizzie, and most particularly, Ginger). Black
Beauty demonstrates one type of animal story and probably the rarest type
produced (most of them are originally written for adults and then adopted by children),
the story of an animal told entirely from that character’s viewpoint.
TYPES AND GENRES 281