Beautiful Joe

book by Margaret Marshall Saunders

Beautiful Joe is a story about a mongrel dog named Joe. It was written by Margaret Marshall Saunders under the name Marshall Saunders, and published in 1893. It won a Humane Society competition. The book was a bestseller and directed public interest to animal cruelty. Joe was a real dog, brutally abused by his owner. He was rescued and his story told as an autobiography. Saunders wrote a sequel called Beautiful Joe's Paradise.

Book cover

In 1934, Saunders was given Canada's highest civilian award at the time, Commander of the British Empire or C.B.E. In 1963, the official Beautiful Joe Park was named in Meaford, Ontario, next to the house where Beautiful Joe was rehabilitated. A Beautiful Joe Heritage Society was formed in 1994 to preserve Joe's legacy and establish a museum.[1]

References change

  1. Future Projects Archived 2008-04-13 at the Wayback Machine from BeautifulJoe.org Accessed 17 July 2012

Other websites change

  • Beautiful Joe Heritage Society
  • Beautiful Joe Park, Meaford Archived 2012-07-17 at the Wayback Machine
  • Ontario historical plaque - Beautiful Joe Archived 2007-09-21 at the Wayback Machine
  • Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography Philadelphia: The Griffith and Rowland Press, 1893, at A Celebration of Women Writers
  • Beautiful Joe at Project Gutenberg
  • Beautiful Joe (1893), with an introduction by Hezekiah Butterworth. Illustrated. From Internet Archive, a scanned book.
  • Goddard, John (2 January 2008). "Meaford's 9/11 dog memorial restored". Toronto Star. Retrieved 2008-09-10.