The Victorian period saw a dramatic rise in the middle class and in the leisure time that this new class had to spend on themselves and their causes. Childhood became more important to the middle class and so the first flowering of children's books, a genre that has prospered up until our own time. One of the great Victorian children's novels is Black Beauty, which illustrated the virtues of obedience and cheerfulness, while also bringing the issue of animal abuse into the public eye.

Black Beauty is a truly affecting, first-person (horse?) account from a noble stallion who gets passed from owner to owner and who takes on all sorts of jobs common to horses at the time. Cloying sentiment is non-existent, as the tragic stories of fellow horses such as Ginger and Captain are told soberly. Interestingly, Sewell implies that we are to our animals as God is to us--they do not understand our ways and reasons (see the early discussion on hunting), but it is right for them to accept that we are wiser and to obey us as cheerfully as possible. A plea for compassion and mercy.”