Based on the true story of Joe, an abused mutt named from in Meaford, Ontario, at the end of the nineteenth century, Beautiful Joe is the moving tale of a dog's rescue from a cruel owner.
Beautiful Joe was written as an autobiography from the perspective of Joe himself, much like Anna Sewell's novel, Black Beauty, which inspired author Margaret Marshall Saunders' (pen name Marshall Saunders) approach to telling Joe's story. Saunders first encountered the story of Beautiful Joe when paying a visit to her sister-in-law, who was rehabilitating the real Joe after her father had rescued him from his abusive owner.
