Beautiful Joe
Beautiful Joeis an 1893novelbyMargaret Marshall Saunderswhich contributed to worldwide awareness ofanimal cruelty.The story is based on adogof the same name from the town ofMeaford, Ontario.
The real Beautiful Joe
[edit]The real Beautiful Joe was anAiredale-typedog. He was medium-sized, brown, and described as likely being partbull terrierand partfox terrier.He was also described as amongrel,a cur, and a mutt. He was originally owned by a localMeafordman, who cruelly abused the dog to the point of near death, and even cut off hisearsandtail.Walter Moore, father of Louise Moore, rescued the dog in 1890, from what likely would have been a violent and painful death. In 1892,Margaret Marshall Saunders(1861–1947), first learned about Beautiful Joe when she visited her brother and his wife, Louise Moore. Saunders was so touched by Joe's story that she wrote anovel-length,fictionalized,autobiographicalversion of it, entitledBeautiful Joe.Margaret Saunders relocated the story to a small town inMaineand changed the family's name from Moore to Morris to win a literary contest sponsored by the American Humane Education Society. The book was firstpublishedin 1893. By 1900, over 800,000 copies sold in the U.S., 40,000 in Canada and 100,000 in the United Kingdom.
Saunders chose to writeBeautiful Joeas an "autobiography"and tell the story from Beautiful Joe's viewpoint, and in her imagined version of Beautiful Joe's own words. While it was not the first book to tell a story from an animal's viewpoint –Black BeautybyAnna Sewellwas already on its way to becoming classic literature by then – it was still an uncommon narrative device. This unusual viewpoint allowed the reader into Beautiful Joe's mind, and inarguably led the reader to feel more sympathy toward thenarratorthan if the material had been presented in a straightforward and documentative manner. Also, Saunders believed that she would not be taken seriously as a writer using the obviously female name Margaret Saunders, so she wrote using the variant name Marshall Saunders.
Fame and legacy
[edit]Saunders submitted her story to a writing contest being run by theHumane Societyin 1893. It won, and the following year it was published as a novel. The response was tremendous; both the book and its subject received worldwide attention. It was the first Canadian book in history to sell over a million copies, and by the late 1930s had sold over 7 million copies worldwide. In 1902, a sequel,Beautiful Joe's Paradise,was published. In 1934, Saunders was granted Canada's highestcivilianaward at the time,Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empireor C.B.E. In 1963, the official Beautiful Joe Park was named in Meaford, next to the Moore house where Beautiful Joe was rehabilitated by Louise Moore. ABeautiful Joe Heritage Societywas formed in 1994 to preserve Joe's legacy and ultimately establish the Moore residence as amuseum.[1]
Connection withBlack Beauty
[edit]Saunders did not avoid comparison of her work to the similarly themedBlack Beauty.Indeed, she makes reference toBlack Beautyin the very first page ofBeautiful Joe,not referring to it by name but writing [from Joe's viewpoint] "I have seen my mistress laughing and crying over a little book that she says is a story of a horse's life". Joe goes on to say that he will write the story of a dog's life, to similarly please his owner. Thus, within the context of the book at least,Beautiful Joeis directly inspired byBlack Beauty.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^Future ProjectsArchived2008-04-13 at theWayback Machinefrom BeautifulJoe.org Accessed April 9, 2008
External links
[edit]
The full text ofBeautiful Joeat Wikisource- Beautiful Joe Heritage Society
- Beautiful Joe Park, Meaford
- Ontario historical plaque - Beautiful Joe
- Beautiful Joe: An AutobiographyPhiladelphia: The Griffith and Rowland Press, 1893, atA Celebration of Women Writers
- Beautiful JoeatProject Gutenberg
- Beautiful Joe(1893), with an introduction byHezekiah Butterworth.Illustrated. FromInternet Archive,a scanned book.
Beautiful Joepublic domain audiobook atLibriVox- Goddard, John (2 January 2008)."Meaford's 9/11 dog memorial restored".Toronto Star.Retrieved2008-09-10.