Anna Sewell | 1820-1878 The fox hunter and the big game hunter are two iconic figures of Victorian England. But this period also saw the emergence of a number of animal advocacy movements. Antivivisectionism, vegetarianism, and animal humanitarianism took a peripheral but important place alongside the more widespread movements in feminism, anti-imperialism, and social and labor reform. While Anna Sewell was not officially a part of any particular movement, her book Black Beauty made a public case for the abuses suffered by that most English of animals, the horse. Published in 1877, Black Beauty, the "autobiography of a horse," has become a children's classic and is generally considered the first "animal story" of note. Sewell's mother, Mary Sewell, herself an author of children's stories, raised her daughter as a devout Quaker. Their faith extended kindness and compassion to animals as well as to humans, and in Black Beauty, Anna Sewell sought to call attention to the cruelties of fashionable practices designed to improve the appearance of the horse. One such practice was docking, or shortening, the tail, which, in addition to causing the horse pain, also left the animal vulnerable to insect bites and stings. Another practice -- and the one that caused Sewell the greatest agony -- was the use of the "bearing rein," which held the horse's head toward its chest, producing not only a graceful arc to the horse's neck but also respiratory problems, severely curtailed vision, and a loss of balance. One critic has read Black Beauty, with its devastating separation of mother and child and record of inhumane mistreatment, as an abolitionist parable. Whatever the book's political significance, Sewell's contribution to the canon of children's literature was a clear attempt to instill kindness and compassion in its young readers. It's possible that this attempt was successful, at least among its older readers: The bearing rein fell out of fashion toward the end of the century.