Black Beauty follows the life of a young foal from his early days in the countryside onwards. As he is bought and sold, Black Beauty is exposed to all manners of trades and lifestyles a horse could find themselves in Victorian England: a squire's riding horse, a hard-driven cab horse, a cart-horse. On this journey, Black Beauty sees the best and worst of mankind through his ever-changing masters and mistresses, and the stories of the other horses he encounters and befriends. Told from the titular character's perspective, the story focuses on the treatment of horses at the time, but honesty and dishonesty, kindness and cruelty, and other themes of virtue and vice are explored throughout.