Beatrix Potter
(1866-1943)
she produced an enormous body of work throughout her lifetime, including: over 500 natural history drawings, botanical studies of fungi, mosses and lichens, landscapes and still life.
Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were - Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.
Beatrix Potter, who wrote the much-loved “Peter Rabbit” children’s tales was born in London on 28 July 1866.
Her childhood was rather lonely, with few friends and only a governess for company. Her fascination for painting and drawing occupied most of her spare time outside lessons and she loved to sketch plants and animals, especially the many pets which she and her brother Bertram kept in the nursery at Bolton Gardens. This interest would later become the inspiration for many of her stories. Some of Beatrix Potter's little books began as letters she wrote to children, with little pen and ink drawings to illustrate them, and she made up a whole series of correspondence between the characters in her books as delightful miniature letters. Beatrix covered pages with sketches of them and almost all of her famous characters are based on the pets that she used to own.
Signed in lower right: “Beatrix Potter / H.B.P. March 92”
Sent to Bertha Mahony Miller at a later date.
In 1890 Beatrix had her first commercial success when she sold some of her illustrations to a greetings card manufacturer. Some years later she developed a story letter she had sent to the son of her former governess into a book. When the book, 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit in Mr MacGregor’s Garden', was turned down by no less than six publishers she decided to pay for 250 copies to be printed as a private edition.
In 1902, Frederick Warne & Co agreed to publish an initial quantity of 8,000. They sold out instantly and Beatrix’s career as a storyteller was launched.
More than 40 million copies of this book have been sold worldwide in more than 35 languages. Since 1902, the publisher Frederick Warne has reprinted 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' more than 300 times.
Beatrix Potter invested the money she earned from her stories in buying Lake District farms and encouraging the revival of the Herdwick sheep. She worked closely with the National Trust, helping it to acquire land and managed farms with a view of long-term preservation.
What is less known of Beatrix Potter is her substantial research and writings on spores and fungi. During her later years she was widely respected throughout England as an expert on fungi, although the Royal Society did refuse to publish at least one of her technical papers. She showed that algae and fungus belong to the same family, studied spoor germination and life cycles of fungus. Beatrix loved painting and drawing: she produced an enormous body of work throughout her lifetime, including: over 500 natural history drawings, botanical studies of fungi, mosses and lichens, landscapes and still life.
Around the time of her death in 1943 many of her notes, including her paper on spores, were burned during the bombing of London in WWII. She kept a private journal which wasn't published until 1966. The reason for this is that it was written in a code of her own invention. The code was broken by Leslie Linder, an engineer. Once the code was broken it took him seven years to decipher Beatrix Potter's journal. In the journal she details her attempts to have her theories and drawings noticed, usually to no avail. To the outside world Beatrix appeared a shy and reserved person but in her diary she was able to express herself openly, and she showed herself to be a strong critic of the artists, writers and politicians of the day.
Perhaps if Beatrix Potter hadn't been so shy, and if the male scientists at the Royal Botanical Gardens hadn't been so dismissive, we would not have her legacy of Peter Rabbit. Having received posthumously an official apology from the Linnaean Society for its treatment of her (they scoffed at her idea that lichen were a symbiotic form), at a meeting held in her honor in 1997, exactly one hundred years after it had barred her from speaking, she is now beginning to receive the recognition she so richly deserves.
Upon her death in 1943 she left 14 farms, some with flocks of Herdwick sheep, and over 4,000 acres of countryside to the National Trust.
…and now you will have to see the movie just released January 5th
© Momentum Pictures. All Rights Reserved
Movie review by Lolly Robinson from
*Avery suggests Potter's work has affinities to the social comedy of Jane Austen, with wry commentary on human foibles. In her stories, we don't see "animals with human feelings [but rather]. . . human beings given animal shapes for the purpose of satirical comedy"; this approach, similar to that of Aesop's Fables, is easily overlooked because of the technical scientific accuracy of her illustrations (189-90).
Carpenter connects her to other fable writers in using animals to comment on human character traits, without needing to provide social background and elements such as sexuality. But he goes on to note that her stories really aren't "moral tales" as fables are, but rather "immoral tales" that "demonstrate the rewards of nonconformity, and exhort. . . her young readers to question the social system into which they found themselves born" (279).
The sense that Potter's works are subversive, encouraging resistance to social conditioning, recurs frequently in criticism. For instance, Lurie says the book appears to admonish restraint and obedience, but in fact teaches that disobedience and exploration are more fun and not really that dangerous (95).
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