Anna Sewell

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Standard Name: Sewell, Anna
Birth Name: Anna Sewell
AS 's only published work was the novel Black Beauty, 1877, which received immediate acclaim and has been celebrated both as a key text advocating animal welfare and other social and political causes and as a best-selling classic of children's literature and of writing about horses.
Black and white photograph of a painting of Anna Sewell. The photograph is oval-shaped and she is shown from the waist up. She is wearing a dark dress that is tied with a ribbon at the waist, and has a straight neckline with lace trim. Her hair is short, dark, and curly.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Beatrix Potter
Beatrix, educated at home and six years older than her brother, was a solitary child. She had few toys; but she became deeply interested in science, and was also, from an early age, devoted to...
Education Cecily Mackworth
She was at first educated at home by thirteen successive governesses. Her mother sometimes read aloud to her daughters: R. D. Blackmore ' Lorna Doone and Anna Sewell 's Black Beauty. After meeting Hardy
Education Enid Blyton
Enid later recalled in vivid detail the first school she went to, Tresco, which was run by the Misses Read in their private house. She recalled, too, the most important texts among her early reading:...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Sewell
Mary Sewell was living at 26 Church Plain, Yarmouth when she bore her daughter, Anna , who became famous as the author of Black Beauty.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Sewell
MS 's daughter Anna predeceased her.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Family and Intimate relationships Joanna Cannan
JC 's three daughters (Josephine , Diana , and Christine Pullein-Thompson ) all had successful writing careers, chiefly in the pony-book genre which their mother had originated. Like JC and her sisters, they began...
Family and Intimate relationships Sarah Stickney Ellis
One of Sarah's sisters, Dorothy, married a man named Sewell, making Sarah a relation by marriage to the writers Mary Sewell and Anna Sewell .
Friends, Associates Jean Ingelow
JI had a small but distinguished circle of intimate friends. By 1863 she was a friend of Alfred Tennyson and was also close to Dora Greenwell . She admired and respected Robert Browning (though she...
Friends, Associates Sarah Stickney Ellis
In a letter written from Pau to her stepdaughter in March 1840, SSE expressed a wish to see her friend (and relation by marriage), the physically disabled Anna Sewell . She exclaimed: [o]h! how I...
Friends, Associates Sarah Stickney Ellis
Among her few writing friends were Mary Howitt and her relations by marriage Mary and Anna Sewell . She greatly admired without personally knowing Elizabeth Fry , and felt a personal connection to Charlotte Brontë
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Sewell
When MS was sixty she began her writing career in earnest. She showed some of her poems to the publisher Henry S. King , whose opinion that This will do
qtd. in
Bayly, Mary. The Life and Letters of Mrs. Sewell. James Nisbet, 1889.
132, 141
encouraged her to...
Intertextuality and Influence Beatrix Potter
Of the first three stories, Carrier's Bob tells how a waggoner's terrier, Bob, is neglected and ill-treated by the widow after his master's death; The Mole Catcher's Burying describes how, as a village mole-catcher lies...
Intertextuality and Influence Shena Mackay
The book blends the ordinary and extraordinary. The two girls devour books: Anna Sewell 's Black Beauty, The Valley of Doom, Louisa May Alcott 's Little Women, Lucy Maud Montgomery 's Anne...
Textual Features Noel Streatfeild
The two children at the centre of this story, Peter and Santa, find themselves threatened with being sent to live in an orphanage when their aunt dies. Instead, they run away to join their uncle...
Textual Features Caroline Norton
The Rebel, spoken by an imprisoned Irish harper who weep[s,] to think upon my country's chain, suggests both a sympathy with the cause of Ireland and the influence of CN 's friend Thomas Moore

Timeline

1823: John Jarrold founded a press, with his wife...

Writing climate item

1823

John Jarrold founded a press, with his wife and four sons, at 3 Cockney Lane, Norwich.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 106. Gale Research, 1991.
106: 159-61
Cockney Lane was later renamed London Street.

1893: Margaret Marshall Saunders published her...

Writing climate item

1893

Margaret Marshall Saunders published her bestselling fictional autobiography of a dog, entitled Beautiful Joe, under the pseudonym Marshall Saunders .
Saunders, Margaret Marshall, and Hezekiah Butterworth. Beautiful Joe. Charles H. Banes, 1893.
prelims
Beautiful Joe Heritage Society. http://www.beautifuljoe.org/.

Texts

Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty. Jarrold and Sons, 1877.