Horses in literature
Horses in Literature:
The horse has inspired writers and artists throughout recorded time.
Throughout the ages the horse has played a significant role in the life and times of man, and this is reflected within the libratory world.This empathy between man and horse, in life and in emotion, is most apparent in the art and literature of the 19th Century.
There are many volumes and words in articles, essays and stories, and tales- filling many volumes. Such as:
Black Beauty (in full: Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse, first published November 24th 1877) is Anna Sewell's first and only novel, composed in the last years of her life between 1871 and 1877 while confined to her house as an invalid.
The story is told in the "first person" (or first horse) as an autobiographical memoir told by a highbred horse named Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days as a foal on an English farm, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses.
Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty because she was enraged at the animal abuse she saw all around her in Victorian England. Overworked and underfed horses were a common sight, and animal maltreatment was an everyday occurrence.
Her novel boldly speaks out against animal cruelty and teaches the importance of treating animals with respect. Written as an autobiography from Black Beauty's point of view, this story follows his life, detailing his descent from a beloved colt to a working carriage horse to a mistreated cab horse.
In this well-loved classic the reader experiences Beauty's life and can understand the devastating effects of animal cruelty and neglect. And with William Geldart's lively drawings and the detailed captions unique to the Whole Story series, this edition of Black Beauty offers background information about late nineteenth-century England that modern readers could access only through a broad range of supplemental research.
Captions cover many topics, from advertisements in animal rights magazines to explanations of the different types of bits and bridles horses wore. This unique approach brings Victorian England to life and places Black Beauty within the context of its era.
The horses of the Bible are almost exclusively war-horses, or at least the property of kings and not of the common people. A doubtful reference to the use of horses in threshing grain is found in Isaiah 28:28.
Horses are among the property which the Egyptians gave to Joseph in exchange for grain (Genesis 47:17). In Deuteronomy 17:16 it is enjoined that the king "shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he may multiply horses." This and other injunctions failed to prevent the Israelites from borrowing from the neighboring civilizations their customs, idolatries, and vices.
Solomon's horses we enumerated in 1 Kings 4, and the se'irim and tebhen of 1 Kings 4:28 (5:8) are identical with the sha'ir ("barley") and tibn ("straw”) with which the Arab feeds his horse today. In war, horses were ridden and were driven in chariots. (Exodus 14:9; Joshua 11:4; 2 Samuel 15:1, etc)
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Horses in Literature to Subject Study

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