Soon after that, he sees her dead body hauled away on a cart. While in London, Beauty sees Ginger, who's badly malnourished and mistreated, working as a job horse.At Jerry's he's partnered with an old horse named Captain, and they work long hours under hard conditions. Jerry's a great guy with a sweet, loving family, and although the cab work is difficult, Beauty finds a lot of happiness working with Jerry. This time Beauty's sold at a horse fair to a London cab driver named Jerry Barker.The man gets frustrated at the extra work of keeping a horse, and Beauty is sold off again.

He's sold once again to a man who employs a couple of dishonest and incompetent grooms. There, he withstands poor treatment from clueless drivers and an uncaring owner.

No longer perfect enough to be a carriage horse, Beauty is sold as a job horse to a new owner.

The fall injures Beauty and scars his knees forever. Beauty trips, falls, and throws Reuben, who dies on impact. Reuben is an alcoholic and is totally wasted at the time.

One night, Beauty suffers a bad injury while being ridden by his groom, Reuben Smith.

He rides to rescue a lady at Earlshall when her own horse runs away with her.

Here, he has to wear a painful bearing rein for fashion's sake, which is basically torture.

Beauty goes with Ginger to Earlshall to be a carriage and riding horse Earlshall seems to be a very fancy and pompous place.

Gordon's health causes the family to leave Birtwick, and they sell Beauty and the other horses. Gordon, and Beauty gets very sick because he's overexerted. Once he and Ginger are caught in a fire while staying at an inn, but make it out safely, and another time John Manly rides him out at night to fetch a doctor for Mrs.

Beauty loves life at Birtwick, although he has two near-death scrapes.

However, time at Birtwick mellows her out.

Beauty spends some time telling us Ginger's backstory-she had a tough life before Birtwick and tends to bite and kick because of it.

Beauty also befriends his fellow Birtwick horses, Ginger and Merrylegs.

At Birtwick, Beauty lives in a stable under the care of a very kind and competent groom, John Manly, and his equally kind and competent stable boy, James.

Farmer Grey breaks him (well, not literally-it's horse talk for learning to use a saddle and bridle), and sells him to Squire Gordon of Birtwick Park. He witnesses some human cruelty toward horses at a young age, including the death of another horse in a hunt, but in general, all is well.

Black Beauty is born at Farmer Grey's farm, where he lives happily with his mom.

Beauty's timeline is basically the book's timeline, so for more details, go ahead and refer to our chapter-by-chapter summaries.

Black beauty novel