| Dark Horse - A Life of Anna Sewell Stroud: Sutton, 2004. pp. 276. ISBN 0-7509-2838-7. £20 Review by Bridget Carrington, PhD student, Roehampton University Anna Sewell is quite literally a one book writer, and this book, Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions. The Autobiography of a Horse , was written in the last seven years of her life. Adrienne E. Gavin's biography therefore concentrates for the most part on Sewell's life, with only a single chapter of two dozen pages allotted to the novel itself, and few more pages chronicling the writing thereof. Even in her discussion of Black Beauty Gavin asserts that it is ‘the autobiography not only of a horse but also of Anna herself' (206), a dangerous statement but one which Gavin clearly believes, having already published an article in 1999 on ‘Reading Anna Sewell's Black Beauty as Autobiography'1. Gavin's statement is followed by one of her far too numerous speculative comments on Sewell's life, The opening of the novel and Birtwick Park were surely based on Dudwick Park [her grandparents' home], Farmer Grey on her grandfather Wright or Philip [her brother], the Gordons on her Aunt and Uncle Wright, the three Misses Blomefield (one even called Ellen) on her three aunts at Dudwick Cottage, and Anna herself and Mary [her mother] as models for characters who step in to prevent cruelty. (206) That Gavin considers that Black Beauty mirrors its author's life is evident in the quotations beneath each chapter heading, all considered as apt a description of that particular period in Sewell's life, as they were in the horse's story. It would be interesting to count the occurrences of sentences involving ‘surely', probably' and ‘possibly' within Gavin's text, but their annoying regularity goes a long way to destroying what is an otherwise extensively researched account of Sewell, and thereby does a grave disservice to her life of a hitherto biographically under-represented author. Although she was a regular and voluminous correspondent, Sewell left no diaries, and Gavin has seen fit to elaborate on the facts of her life with a large amount of conjecture, particularly in those areas which consider any romantic attachment Sewell might have made. Sewell made no reference to such matters in her letters, but Gavin scatters her text with possible expectations of marriage which her subject might have entertained. Gavin has been unwisely tempted into expanding Sewell's recorded travels with conjectural visits, both to family and to those visitor attractions which became obligatory for the more mobile Victorian public. So, in the space of three paragraphs between pages 114 and 115 readers are told, …possibly the Buxton stop was en route…Anna surely travelled down to see her new niece, possibly also visiting the Royal Pavilion…she would almost certainly that summer have visited the Great Exhibition [followed by a description of this exhibition which we have no evidence that Sewell visited]…Anna probably took in other London sights…She may have been one of the 145, 000 visitors to London Zoo in August 1851… Gavin has clearly undertaken extensive and meticulous research, and it is almost as if, having gone to so much trouble, she is unwilling to select evidence to support what she knows Sewell actually did, preferring instead to include extra detail and postulate unsubstantiated visits to flesh out the meagre record of her actual visits. It would have been less irritating had she reserved this information, which in itself has considerable interest for readers, for a general background to each period of Sewell's life, rather than including it within the verifiable account. The continual use of these qualifying phrases ‘surely ‘and ‘almost certainly' also add an undesirably gushing note which sits uneasily within such a well-researched book. This is a painstaking account of Sewell's life, very fully annotated, with a bibliography which would be extremely useful to scholars of Black Beauty and its author. It is an anomaly therefore that the text itself is, I feel, far less scholarly in its approach, and therefore more suited to a popular than an academic audience. 1. ‘ The Autobiography of a Horse : reading Anna Sewell's Black Beauty as Autobiography' in Martin Hewitt (ed.), Representing Victorian Lives, Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies, vol. 2 (Leeds, Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, 1999), pp. 51-62 Bridget Carrington |