The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by the titular horse named Black Beauty— beginning with his carefree days as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude.

Black Beauty is one of the best loved animal stories ever written by English author Anna Sewell. It is told by the magnificent horse himself, from his idyllic days on a country squire's estate to his harsh fate as a London cab horse. No one can ever forget the gallant Black Beauty, a horse with a white star on his forehead and a heart of unyielding courage. While forthrightly teaching animal welfare, it also teaches how to treat people with kindness, sympathy, and respect.

Anna Sewell was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, on March 30, 1820. Brought up in a strict Quaker family, Anna developed a strong interest in horses as a young girl. But a crippling bone disease and a fall in 1834 left her an invalid for most of her life. By her mid-thirties she was severely lame and could only get around in a pony cart, and characteristically she would never use a whip on the animal. In 1871, she was told she had eighteen months to live, and by the end of that year, she had begun her book, Black Beauty, hoping it might make people a little kinder to their faithful horses. She lived long enough to finish her book and see it published in 1877. On April 25, 1878, she died at her home in Old Catton near Norwich, England. Black Beauty, an enormous success from its first appearance, was soon adopted by the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and used to improve the conditions of horses everywhere.