Black Beauty is a young black colt and loves roaming Farmer Gray's fields with his mother. As he grows into a handsome stallion, he is trained into the use of a saddle and whip and sold to Squire Gordon of Birtwick Hall. Here, he makes many friends including the angry Ginger, the well-meaning Merrylegs and the elderly Sir Oliver, as well as stablehands James and John.
When Squire Gordon has to move abroad to improve his wife's ill health, Black Beauty is sold again to Earlshall Park. So begins a hard and unsettled life for Beauty, always at the whim of his human owners. Often he is whipped and made to wear blinkers or the bearing rein, at other times he must work as a cab horse on the busy London streets.
Will Black Beauty ever be able to roam the fields again as he did in his childhood? What has become of his friends Ginger and Merrylegs?