Potter, Beatrix

Potter, Beatrix (1866–1943). British writer and illustrator of children's books, born in London to wealthy but neglectful parents. She was educated by governesses in her ‘unloved birthplace’ and sought solace from her loneliness in painting and drawing, particularly animals. Her love of nature was stimulated by holidays in Scotland and the Lake District (in old age she wrote ‘It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of of the country than a child who is country born'). In the late 1880s, to amuse young relatives, she began making drawings of animals dressed in clothes and engaged in human activities, and in 1893 she began writing picture letters to the child of one of her former governesses. These grew into her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which she published privately in 1901. The following year it was published commercially by the firm of Frederick Warne & Co., launching her highly successful career. (In 1905 she became engaged to Norman Warne, manager of her publishers, but he died of leukemia the following month; eventually, in 1913, she married her solicitor. Her parents disapproved of both matches, as they regarded her suitors as socially inferior.) She published more than 20 other books, including The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904) and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908), works that made her a part of nursery folklore. ‘Her books were the first English classics for very young children, though their readership has always included many adults who return to them again and again to delight in their wit … In old age she came to resemble her own Mrs Tiggywinkle, round and twinkling-eyed’ (Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, 1984). The earnings from her books allowed her to buy land and property in the Lake District, where she became a successful sheep breeder and was a generous supporter of the National Trust. Examples of her work are in the Beatrix Potter Gallery, Hawkshead, Cumbria, and the Tate Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum in London. An exhibition was devoted to her at the Tate in 1987.