The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by the titular horse named Black Beauty-beginning with his carefree days as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country.

Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness.

Each chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude.

It is an adroit method that has been used by the celebrated authoress in making the horse speak and tell its own story-its parents, different masters from childhood to fairly advanced age.