Editing Beautiful Joe

{{Short description|Book by Margaret Marshall Saunders}}
{{about|the dog and novel|the unrelated film|Beautiful Joe (film)}}
{{distinguish|Viewtiful Joe}}

[[File:Beautiful Joe By Marshall Saunders.jpg|thumb|right]]

'''''Beautiful Joe''''' is an 1893 [[novel]] by [[Margaret Marshall Saunders]] which contributed to worldwide awareness of [[animal cruelty]]. The story is based on a [[dog]] of the same name from the town of [[Meaford, Ontario]].

==The real Beautiful Joe==
The real Beautiful Joe was an [[Airedale terrier|Airedale-type]] dog. He was medium-sized, brown, and described as likely being part [[bull terrier]] and part [[fox terrier]]. He was also described as a [[Mixed-breed dog|mongrel]], a cur, and a mutt. He was originally owned by a local [[Meaford, Ontario|Meaford]] man, who cruelly abused the dog to the point of near death, and even cut off his [[ears]] and [[tail]]. 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&ndash;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 a [[novel]]-length, [[fictional]]ized, [[autobiographical]] version of it, entitled ''Beautiful Joe''. Margaret Saunders relocated the story to a small town in [[Maine]] and changed the family's name from Moore to Morris to win a literary contest sponsored by the American Humane Education Society. The book was first [[publish]]ed in 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 write ''Beautiful Joe'' as 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 Beauty]]'' by [[Anna Sewell]] was 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 the [[narrator]] than 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==
Saunders submitted her story to a writing contest being run by the [[Humane Society]] in 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 highest [[civilian]] award at the time, [[Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire]] or 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. A '''Beautiful Joe Heritage Society''' was formed in 1994 to preserve Joe's legacy and ultimately establish the Moore residence as a [[museum]].<ref>[http://www.beautifuljoe.org/project.cfm Future Projects] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080413192334/http://www.beautifuljoe.org/project.cfm |date=2008-04-13 }} from BeautifulJoe.org Accessed April 9, 2008</ref>

==Connection with ''Black Beauty''==
Saunders did not avoid comparison of her work to the similarly themed ''[[Black Beauty]].'' Indeed, she makes reference to ''Black Beauty'' in the very first page of ''Beautiful 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 Joe'' is directly inspired by ''Black Beauty''.

==See also==
* [[List of individual dogs]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*{{wikisource-inline|single=true}}
*[http://www.beautifuljoe.org Beautiful Joe Heritage Society]
*[http://www.meaford.com/town/attractions.htm Beautiful Joe Park, Meaford]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070921002749/http://www.ontarioplaques.com/Plaques_GHI/Plaque_Grey02.html Ontario historical plaque - Beautiful Joe]
*[http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/saunders/joe/joe.html ''Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography''] Philadelphia: The Griffith and Rowland Press, 1893, at [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/ A Celebration of Women Writers]
{{Gutenberg|no=2818|name=Beautiful Joe}}
*[https://archive.org/details/beautifuljoeauto00saunuoft ''Beautiful Joe''] (1893), with an introduction by [[Hezekiah Butterworth]]. Illustrated. From [[Internet Archive]], a scanned book.
*{{librivox book | title=Beautiful Joe| author=Saunders}}
* {{cite news | url=https://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/290350 | newspaper=[[Toronto Star]] | accessdate=2008-09-10 | date=2 January 2008 | title=Meaford's 9/11 dog memorial restored | first=John | last=Goddard}}

[[Category:Individual dogs]]
[[Category:Animal cruelty incidents]]
[[Category:Fiction about animal cruelty]]
[[Category:Novels about dogs]]
[[Category:Individual animals in Canada]]