Black Beauty’s Family: how to sort the stories out

If you’re trying to collect all the Pullein-Thompson sisters’ stories, you will hit a stumbling block when it comes to their Black Beauty’s family series.

Publishing history

The series has a rather tangled publishing history. Some, but not all, of the stories were published separately, but some saw the light of day only in collections. To add to the confusion, some collections have the same name but do not in fact contain the same stories, so what this section aims to do is disentangle which stories can be found where.

The series

Black Beauty’s Family is an historical series of nine stories, with three contributed by each Pullein-Thompson sister. Each story takes one horse, either an ancestor of Black Beauty or a descendant, and tells its story. The foreword to the first collected volume of stories (Black Beauty’s Family) written by ‘Black Abbott’ says:

Because of the world-wide interest shown in the auto-biography of my kinsman, Black Beauty, I have now taken the liberty of gathering together the life stories written by three other members of my extraordinarily talented family. These three mildewed manuscripts were found in a loft, in a saddle room medicine cupboard and beneath a pile of rubbish in a deserted loosebox, and, except for the occasional undecipherable word, have been published exactly as they were written.

All the stories

Single stories

As far as I know, the editions shown in the pictures below are the only ones that were published as single volumes. JPT’s Black Swift is an historical story set during the Civil War, but it’s not badged as a Black Beauty’s Family story.

BLACK BEAUTY’S CLAN

Brockhampton Press, Leicester, 1975, illus Elisabeth Grant
The Children’s Book Club, London, 1976 (not pictured)
McGraw-Hill Companies, 1980, illus Elisabeth Grant
Contains:

• Black Ebony
•  Black Princess
•  Black Velvet

BLACK BEAUTY’S FAMILY

Hodder & Stoughton, 1978, illus Elisabeth Grant
McGraw Hill Companies, 1980, illus Elisabeth Grant, cover Carol Wild

Contains:

•  Nightshade
•  Black Romany
•  Blossom

BLACK BEAUTY’S FAMILY 1

Beaver Books, London, 1981, illus Elisabeth Grant. Cover photograh Equestrian Photographic Services Ltd

Contains:

• Black Romany
•  Blossom

BLACK BEAUTY’S FAMILY 2

Beaver Books, London, 1982. Not illustrated. Cover photograh Equestrian Photographic Services Ltd
Contains:

• Black Raven the Witch
•  Black Piper
•  Black Pioneer

BLACK BEAUTY’S FAMILY

Chancellor, 1986
Contains:

•  Black Ebony
•  Black Princess
•  Black Velvet
•  Nightshade
•  Black Romany
•  Blossom

BLACK BEAUTY’S FAMILY

Red Fox, 2000. Not illustrated.
Contains:

• Black Ebony
•  Black Princess
•  Black Velvet

MORE FROM BLACK BEAUTY’S FAMILY

Red Fox, 2001. Not illustrated.
Contains:

• Nightshade
•  Black Romany
•  Blossom

Links and sources