IN 2017, a rare edition of Black Beauty went up for auction in Norfolk, in aid of the local Redwings Horse Sanctuary. The fact that the title is still cherished enough to merit its listing proved a reminder of how powerful and moving Anna Sewell’s novel remains. Initially published in the run-up to Christmas 1877, by Norwich-based publisher Jarrold and Co, the childhood favourite has never been out of print.
Told from the point of view of Black Beauty (Michael Morpurgo adopted the same storytelling device in War Horse), the book takes the reader on the horse’s life journey in both town and country. Despite the various locations in which the novel unfolds, including London, where Black Beauty works as a cab-horse, the novel is a clear tribute to the author’s connection to Norfolk. ‘Norfolk was the county of her birth, death and family heritage,’ explains Prof Adrienne E. Gavin, author of a biography of Sewell entitled Dark Horse.
Born 200 years ago, on March 30, 1820, in Great Yarmouth on the east Norfolk coast, the part of the county that would become essential to the spirit of Sewell’s iconic novel was the Bure Valley, a landscape that mixes marshland and crop fields, through which the River Bure laces its way towards the Broads. Sewell’s family went on to live in London and then Brighton, but she returned to Norfolk in the last years of her life to write Black Beauty. The author would often visit her relations in East Anglia, too, so the landscape formed a powerful thread through her life.
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin April 29, 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin April 29, 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
