One of the first animal viewpoint novels published in North America, Margaret Marshall Saunders’s Beautiful Joe tells the story of an abused dog and his rescue by a humane family. The novel, based on the true story of a dog in the author’s home province of Ontario, fuelled humane sentiments worldwide. This annotated, illustrated edition draws on archival collections to trace the novel’s impact on the nineteenth-century animal protection movement. The introduction also highlights some of the important social issues surrounding the substantive revisions and omissions in ensuing editions of the text.

The historical appendices place the novel in its rich milieu as an international bestseller that taught a generation of children to practice kindness towards animals. Documents include animal training manuals, lesson plans for teaching humane education, legal records of prosecutions for cruelty, and contemporary writings on the psychology of pet-keeping.

MARGARET MARSHALL SAUNDERS was descended on both sides of her family from New England Planters who had immigrated to Nova Scotia in the 1760s. A native of Halifax, she campaigned for humane treatment of animals, and integrated into her famous novel Beautiful Joe her criticism of the careless exploitation of natural resources, as well as ideas on education and the upbringing of children.

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“Margaret Marshall Saunders begins the introduction to Beautiful Joe: ‘The wonderfully successful book, entitled “Black Beauty,” came like a living voice out of the animal kingdom.’ Keridiana Chez’s superb edition of Saunders’s great novel has recalled another vibrant animal voice. Chez not only restores the original 1894 edition—more politically contentious than its many sanitized twentieth-century successors—but she also provides a splendidly thorough introduction and evocative cultural contexts. Now at last there is a definitive edition of Beautiful Joe. I anticipate teaching it with great pleasure, right alongside Black Beauty, where the ‘living voice’ of the mutilated, loving dog and the ill-used, faithful horse will indeed be beautiful.” — Deborah Denenholz Morse, co-editor of Victorian Animal Dreams

“At long last, the novel that haunts the history of humane education is back in print, and in a scholarly edition that restores the cringe-worthy details that indicate how a story of animal torture became Canada’s first bestseller. With well-organized appendices of carefully selected, contemporaneous ephemera, this edition is guaranteed to spark lively discussions among scholars and students alike. Situating Saunders’s fiction amid debates about animal protection, petkeeping, vivisection, prohibition, and publication, Chez’s comprehensive introduction further helps to set new terms of debate by making the case for the relevance of the novel to contemporary animal studies scholarship.” — Susan McHugh, University of New England