Anna Sewell
Sewell’s introduction to writing began in her youth when she helped edit the works of her mother—a deeply religious, popular author of juvenile best-sellers. Sewell spent the last seven or eight years of her life—confined to her house as an invalid—writing Black Beauty. The book, a fictional autobiography of a gentle highbred horse, had a strong moral purpose. It may have helped abolish the cruel practice of using the checkrein.