Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) was an English writer, illustrator and naturalist, the creator of Peter Rabbit. Her small books, illustrated with her own watercolours, became classics of children's literature, and her farms in the Lake District became part of the National Trust.
Genres
letters and other genres
Works
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
A London childhood
Helen Beatrix Potter was born in London on 28 July 1866 into a wealthy family. Educated at home by governesses, she spent much of her time drawing the plants and animals she kept as pets, among them rabbits named Benjamin Bouncer and Peter Piper.
Holidays in Scotland and the Lake District gave her a love of the countryside. She made precise studies of fungi and wrote a paper on how their spores germinate, which was presented for her at the Linnean Society in 1897, since women could not attend.
Peter Rabbit
In 1893 she sent an illustrated letter about a rabbit named Peter to Noel Moore, the sick son of her former governess. Years later she turned it into a book, which she first had printed at her own expense in 1901, after several publishers refused it.
Frederick Warne & Co. published The Tale of Peter Rabbit with colour pictures in 1902; it sold tens of thousands of copies within a year. More than twenty books followed, including Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Jemima Puddle-Duck.
The Lake District
Her engagement in 1905 to her publisher Norman Warne ended with his sudden death a few weeks later. She used her income to buy Hill Top Farm in the village of Near Sawrey, in the Lake District.
In 1913 she married a local solicitor, William Heelis, and devoted herself to farming and to breeding Herdwick sheep. When she died on 22 December 1943, she left over four thousand acres and fourteen farms to the National Trust.
Anecdotes
A letter to a sick boy
The first version of Peter Rabbit was a picture letter Beatrix Potter wrote in September 1893 to five-year-old Noel Moore, who was ill. It began: 'I don't know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits.'
Peter the toy
Beatrix Potter registered a Peter Rabbit doll at the Patent Office in 1903, making Peter one of the first fictional characters to be made into a licensed toy.
Frequently asked questions
Who were Peter Rabbit's sisters?
Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail, who are good little bunnies, unlike Peter.
Where did Beatrix Potter live?
In London until her forties, then in the Lake District, at Hill Top and later Castle Cottage in Near Sawrey.
Was Beatrix Potter a scientist?
She was a serious amateur naturalist and mycologist whose drawings and observations of fungi are still valued by scientists.