Friday, September 29th we met at Kris's home for a discussion and movie of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. We were particularly pleased to be able to have our resident equestrian expert, Peggy Ann, present to share her knowledge and insight about horses and their care to help us understand the book better.
Here's a brief overview of the book from Wikipedia (which we all know is 100% trustworthy. Right . . .)
Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse is an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell. It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she was bedridden and seriously ill. The novel became an immediate best-seller, with Sewell dying just five months after its publication, but having lived long enough to see her only novel become a success.With fifty million copies sold, Black Beauty is one of the best-selling books of all time.
Black Beauty was Anna Sewell's first and only book. She wrote it more for adults than children, as she was hoping to change the minds of the people of her day and culture to be more caring about animals and more particularly horses. She was successful in this as Black Beauty ended up being a very influential book. Today it is generally read as children's literature.
There were 7 of us present: Stephanie T,, Stephanie R, Peggy Ann, Merri, Kris, Lorraine, and Lorraine's mom, Joan. As usual, we had plenty of food! - chicken salad sandwiches, Swiss Barley soup, fresh melon, eclairs, relish tray, chocolate mousse, potato wedges, spinach artichoke dip. (I probably missed something.)
We watched the 1994 movie which got the best reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. We recognized a lot of the actors from other British TV we have watched so we did spend some time looking up all the other shows people were in on IMDB - a very worthwhile endeavor to help keep some of us awake. I am happy to report that neither Merri nor Kris did not fall asleep!
