A show collie tells his own story - the bench, the gypsies, the kind owners and the cruel ones - in the great Victorian tradition of Black Beauty.
Gordon Stables (1840-1910) was a Royal Navy surgeon turned writer, the author of more than a hundred books and, for years, the medical voice of The Girl's Own Paper. Sable and White, published in 1893, is his dog novel: the life of Luath, a sable-and-white collie, narrated in his own voice from puppyhood through the Victorian show bench, a succession of homes, a spell among travellers, the lost-dog world, and at last a quiet retirement.
It belongs to the animal autobiography that Anna Sewell began - sentiment in the service of kindness - and it is illustrated by Harrison Weir and Winifred Austen, two of the best animal artists of the day.