Long before I was a student of Victorian literature and culture, I was a girl reading and re-reading the classic book Black Beauty. Even now, I can recall key events in that fictional horse's life, including his fellow horse workers and the various owners they served, and the abuse they encountered at various points in the novel. It was decades before I learned to see the book as a commentary on the class system in England, and it was only in reading the opening of Human Minds and Animal Stories that I learned how much of an impact that book had made when published, stirring waves of animal rights advocates to action that resulted in new animal welfare programs and legal protections. It is not surprising, given that impact, that the authors of the present book see Black Beauty as “a perfect historical example of the power of narratives...
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