I DISCOVERED BLACK BEAUTY in the summer of 1967, about the same time that I discovered Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. My copy came from the gloomy basement of the family home, from the shelf on which my parents' old books were stored. It had an antique, dusty look (wedged up against Bob, Son of Battle, my father's childhood favourite) and I picked it up reluctantly. Didn't everyone prefer shiny new books, pristine and unread? And yet . . . there weren't enough horse books in the world to satisfy my hunger, and I'd nearly run out. This shabby volume would have to do.

Back then, I wouldn't have looked at the publication date (it hadn't yet occurred to me that books, like people, had birthdays). But even if I had, 1877 would not have meant much to an 11-year-old from the suburbs of Boston, USA, for whom the world of Victorian London seemed as remote as the pyramids of Egypt. I began to read slowly, warily, eyeing the brown-edged pages with suspicion. Perhaps (I thought) it would be dusty and ancient inside as well. Perhaps the words would be old-fashioned and the story stilted. Perhaps it would (horror of horrors!) turn out to be about something other than horses. But the beautiful black colt on the cover drew me in, promised galloping adventures of the sort I could barely live without. Horses, always horses.

And then came the opening sentence: “The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it” and the realisation that this was no ordinary horse book, but the autobiography of a horse. I was sold. And read on. And so, through the gentle, unflinching eyes of Black Beauty, I met poor sensitive Ginger, to whom men had always been cruel, Merrylegs, a pony of great charm and wisdom, Sir Oliver, the disillusioned war horse, and a wide variety of human heroes and rogues - kind masters and crooked grooms, cabbies and drunkards, the fantastically wealthy, the casually cruel, the desperately poor. Black Beauty himself proved an unforgettable guide to 19th-century England, a sensitive observer by turns joyous, despairing, resigned.

Revisiting the book as an adult, I could practically recite whole scenes thanks to the number of times I read and reread it all those years ago. And there was Black Beauty's dignified voice, just as I'd remembered it, telling me once more what it is to be a horse, to roll in a meadow on a warm summer day, to stand for hours in the rain with only a kind word for sustenance, to be loved dearly or treated cruelly, to offer one's heart and soul to the world and desire only fair treatment in return.

Fifty million copies of Black Beauty have been sold in the years since Anna Sewell's publisher paid her £20 for the story. She had hoped it might serve to alert a few of her contemporaries to the feelings and sufferings of “dumb animals”, and in that respect Black Beauty has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.

But when you return to Black Beauty some day in the distant future (perhaps with children of your own), I predict that it will not be Anna Sewell's voice you remember. It will be his.

Introduction to the Puffin Classics edition of Black Beauty © Meg Rosoff 2008

Meg Rosoff won the Carnegie Medal for her novel Just in Case, about a boy's battle with Fate

Factfile

Anna Sewell (1820-1878) sprained both of her ankles at the age of 14. She never recovered, and her reliance on horse-drawn carriages fostered her respect for animals.

Black Beauty was Sewell's only work, and she spent the last six years of her life writing it.

It has been filmed five times, most recently in 1994. A former racehorse called Docs Keepin Time played Black Beauty.

Many other children's books feature horse characters, including National Velvet, by Enid Bagnold, The Horse and His Boy, by C.S.Lewis and Michael Morpurgo's War Horse - now a stage play at the National Theatre.

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