Beatrix Potter

Potter aged eight, c. 1874

Potter's family on both sides were from the Manchester area.[7] They were English Unitarians,[8] associated with dissenting Protestant congregations, influential in 19th century England, that affirmed the oneness of God and that rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Potter's paternal grandfather, Edmund Potter, from Glossop in Derbyshire, owned what was then the largest calico printing works in England, and later served as a Member of Parliament.[9]

Potter's father, Rupert William Potter (1832–1914), was educated at Manchester College by the Unitarian philosopher James Martineau.[10][11] He then trained as a barrister in London. Rupert practised law, specialising in equity law and conveyancing. He married Helen Leech (1839–1932) on 8 August 1863 at Hyde Unitarian Chapel, Gee Cross. Helen was the daughter of Jane Ashton (1806–1884) and John Leech, a wealthy cotton merchant and shipbuilder from Stalybridge. Helen's first cousins were siblings Harriet Lupton (née Ashton) and Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde. It was reported in July 2014 that Potter had personally given a number of her own original hand-painted illustrations to the two daughters of Arthur and Harriet Lupton, who were cousins to both Beatrix Potter and Catherine, Princess of Wales.[10][12]

Potter aged fifteen with her springer spaniel, Spot

Potter's parents lived comfortably at 2 Bolton Gardens, West Brompton, London, where Helen Beatrix was born on 28 July 1866 and her brother Walter Bertram on 14 March 1872.[13] The house was destroyed in the Blitz. Bousfield Primary School now stands where the house once was. A blue plaque on the school building testifies to the former site of the Potter home.[14] Both parents were artistically talented,[15] and Rupert was an adept amateur photographer.[16][17] Rupert had invested in the stock market, and by the early 1890s, he was extremely wealthy.[18]

Beatrix Potter was educated by three governesses, the last of whom was Annie Moore (née Carter), just three years older than Potter, who tutored Potter in German as well as acting as lady's companion.[19] She and Potter remained friends throughout their lives, and Annie's eight children were the recipients of many of Potter's picture letters. It was Annie who later suggested that these letters might make good children's books.[20]

Potter, aged 16, stayed at Wray Castle in 1882 on a family vacation, thus began her long association with the English Lake District

She and her younger brother Walter Bertram (1872–1918) grew up with few friends outside their large extended family. Her parents were artistic, interested in nature, and enjoyed the countryside. As children, Potter and Bertram had numerous small animals as pets which they observed closely and drew endlessly. In their schoolroom, Potter and Bertram kept a variety of small pets—mice, rabbits, a hedgehog and some bats, along with collections of butterflies and other insects—which they drew and studied.[21] Potter was devoted to the care of her small animals, often taking them with her on long holidays.[22] In most of the first fifteen years of her life, Potter spent summer holidays at Dalguise, an estate on the River Tay in Perthshire, Scotland. There she sketched and explored an area that nourished her imagination and her observation.[23] Her first sketchbook from those holidays, kept at age 8, and dated 1875, is held at and has been digitised by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.[24] Potter and her brother were allowed great freedom in the country, and both children became adept students of natural history. In 1882, when Dalguise was no longer available, the Potters took their first summer holiday in the Lake District, at Wray Castle near Lake Windermere.[25] Here Potter met Hardwicke Rawnsley, vicar of Wray and later the founding secretary of the National Trust, whose interest in the countryside and country life inspired the same in Potter and who was to have a lasting impact on her life.[26][27]

Lingholm country house (where Potter spent her summer holidays from 1885 to 1907) and a statue of Peter Rabbit on the house grounds. Lingholm kitchen garden inspired Mr. McGregor's garden in the Peter Rabbit stories. With its connection to Potter, Lingholm was listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England in 2013.[28][29]

At about the age of 14, Potter began to keep a diary, written in a simple substitution cipher of her own devising. Her Journal was important to the development of her creativity, serving as both sketchbook and literary experiment. In tiny handwriting, she reported on society, recorded her impressions of art and artists, recounted stories and observed life around her.[30] The Journal, deciphered and transcribed by Leslie Linder in 1958, does not provide an intimate record of her personal life, but it is an invaluable source for understanding a vibrant part of British society in the late 19th century. It describes Potter's maturing artistic and intellectual interests, her often amusing insights into the places she visited, and her unusual ability to observe nature and to describe it. Started in 1881, her journal ends in 1897 when her artistic and intellectual energies were absorbed in scientific study and in efforts to publish her drawings.[31] Precocious but reserved and often bored, she was searching for more independent activities and wished to earn some money of her own while dutifully taking care of her parents, dealing with her especially demanding mother,[32] and managing their various households.

Beatrix Potter: reproductive system of Hygrocybe coccinea, 1897

Beatrix Potter's parents did not discourage higher education. As was common in the Victorian era, women of her class were privately educated and rarely went to university.[33]

Beatrix Potter was interested in every branch of natural science except astronomy.[34] Botany was a passion for most Victorians and nature study was a popular enthusiasm. She collected fossils,[35] studied archaeological artefacts from London excavations, and was interested in entomology. In all these areas, she drew and painted her specimens with increasing skill. By the 1890s, her scientific interests centred on mycology. First drawn to fungi because of their colours and evanescence in nature and her delight in painting them, her interest deepened after meeting Charles McIntosh, a revered naturalist and amateur mycologist, during a summer holiday in Dunkeld in Perthshire in 1892. He helped improve the accuracy of her illustrations, taught her taxonomy, and supplied her with live specimens to paint during the winter. Curious as to how fungi reproduced, Potter began microscopic drawings of fungus spores (the agarics) and in 1895 developed a theory of their germination.[36] Through the connections of her uncle Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, a chemist and vice-chancellor of the University of London, she consulted with botanists at Kew Gardens, convincing George Massee of her ability to germinate spores and her theory of hybridisation.[37] She did not believe in the theory of symbiosis proposed by Simon Schwendener, the German mycologist, as previously thought; instead, she proposed a more independent process of reproduction.[38]

Rebuffed by William Thiselton-Dyer, the Director at Kew, because of her sex and her amateur status, Potter wrote up her conclusions and submitted a paper, On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae, to the Linnean Society in 1897. It was introduced by Massee because, as a woman, Potter could not attend proceedings or read her paper. She subsequently withdrew it, realising that some of her samples were contaminated, but continued her microscopic studies for several more years. Her paper has only recently been rediscovered , along with the rich, artistic illustrations and drawings that accompanied it. Her work is only now being properly evaluated.[39][40][41] Potter later gave her other mycological and scientific drawings to the Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside, where mycologists still refer to them to identify fungi. There is also a collection of her fungus paintings at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth, Scotland, donated by Charles McIntosh. In 1967, the mycologist W. P. K. Findlay included many of Potter's beautifully accurate fungus drawings in his Wayside & Woodland Fungi, thereby fulfilling her desire to one day have her fungus drawings published in a book.[42] In 1997, the Linnean Society issued a posthumous apology to Potter for the sexism displayed in its handling of her research.[43]

First edition, 1902

Potter's artistic and literary interests were deeply influenced by fairy tales and fantasy. She was a student of the classic fairy tales of Western Europe. As well as stories from the Old Testament, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, she grew up with Aesop's Fables, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies,[44] the folk tales and mythology of Scotland, the German Romantics, Shakespeare,[45] and the romances of Sir Walter Scott.[46] As a young child, before the age of eight, Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense, including the much loved The Owl and the Pussycat, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland had made their impression, although she later said of Alice that she was more interested in Tenniel's illustrations than what they were about.[47]

The Brer Rabbit stories of Joel Chandler Harris had been family favourites, and she later studied his Uncle Remus stories and illustrated them.[48] She studied book illustration from a young age and developed her own tastes, but the work of the picture book triumvirate Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott, the last an illustrator whose work was later collected by her father, was a great influence.[49][50] When she started to illustrate, she chose first the traditional rhymes and stories, "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", "Puss-in-boots", and "Red Riding Hood".[51] However, most often her illustrations were fantasies featuring her own pets: mice, rabbits, kittens, and guinea pigs.[52]

In her teenage years, Potter was a regular visitor to the art galleries of London, particularly enjoying the summer and winter exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London.[53] Her Journal reveals her growing sophistication as a critic as well as the influence of her father's friend, the artist Sir John Everett Millais, who recognised Potter's talent of observation. Although Potter was aware of art and artistic trends, her drawing and her prose style were uniquely her own.[54]

Potter illustration, "Toad's Tea Party", c. 1905, which appears in her Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes, 1917

As a way to earn money in the 1890s, Potter printed Christmas cards of her own design, as well as cards for special occasions. These were her first commercially successful works as an illustrator.[55] Mice and rabbits were the most frequent subject of her fantasy paintings. In 1890, the firm of Hildesheimer and Faulkner bought several of the drawings of her rabbit Benjamin Bunny to illustrate verses by Frederic Weatherly titled A Happy Pair. In 1893, the same printer bought several more drawings for Weatherly's Our Dear Relations, another book of rhymes, and the following year Potter sold a series of frog illustrations and verses for Changing Pictures, a popular annual offered by the art publisher Ernest Nister. Potter was pleased by this success and determined to publish her own illustrated stories.[56]

Whenever Potter went on holiday to the Lake District or Scotland, she sent letters to young friends, illustrating them with quick sketches. Many of these letters were written to the children of her former governess Annie Carter Moore, particularly to Moore's eldest son Noel, who was often ill. In September 1893, Potter was on holiday at Eastwood in Dunkeld, Perthshire. She had run out of things to say to Noel, and so she told him a story about "four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter". It became one of the most famous children's letters ever written and the basis of Potter's future career as a writer-artist-storyteller.[57]

Potter's dummy manuscripts of three of her books – designed to see how the printed book would look

In 1900, Potter revised her tale about the four little rabbits, and fashioned a dummy book of it – it has been suggested, in imitation of Helen Bannerman's 1899 bestseller The Story of Little Black Sambo.[58] Unable to find a buyer for the work, she published it for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901. It was drawn in black and white with a coloured frontispiece. Rawnsley had great faith in Potter's tale, recast it in didactic verse, and made the rounds of the London publishing houses. Frederick Warne & Co had previously rejected the tale but, eager to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted the "bunny book" (as the firm called it) following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke.[59] The firm declined Rawnsley's verse in favour of Potter's original prose, and Potter agreed to colour her pen and ink illustrations, choosing the new Hentschel three-colour process to reproduce her watercolours.[60]

Potter used many real locations for her book illustrations. The Tower Bank Arms, Near Sawrey appears in The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck.

On 2 October 1902, The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published and was an immediate success.[61] It was followed the next year by The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester, which had also first been written as picture letters to the Moore children. Working with Norman Warne as her editor, Potter published two or three little books each year: 23 books in all. The last book in this format was Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes in 1922, a collection of favourite rhymes. Although The Tale of Little Pig Robinson was not published until 1930, it had been written much earlier. Potter continued creating her little books until after the First World War when her energies were increasingly directed toward her farming, sheep-breeding and land conservation.[62]

The immense popularity of Potter's books was based on the lively quality of her illustrations, the non-didactic nature of her stories, the depiction of the rural countryside, and the imaginative qualities she lent to her animal characters.[63][64]

Potter was also a canny businesswoman. As early as 1903, she made and patented a Peter Rabbit doll. It was followed by other "spin-off" merchandise over the years, including painting books, board games, wall-paper, figurines, baby blankets and china tea-sets. All were licensed by Frederick Warne & Co and earned Potter an independent income, as well as immense profits for her publisher.[65]

In 1905, Potter and Norman Warne became unofficially engaged. Potter's parents objected to the match because Warne was "in trade" and thus not socially suitable. The engagement lasted only one month—Warne died of pernicious anaemia at age 37.[66] That same year, Potter used some of her income and a small inheritance from an aunt to buy Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in the English Lake District near Windermere. Potter and Warne may have hoped that Hill Top Farm would be their holiday home, but after Warne's death, Potter went ahead with its purchase as she had always wanted to own that farm and live in "that charming village".[67]

Hill Top in Near Sawrey – Potter's home from 1905 until her death in 1943, now owned by the National Trust and preserved as it was when she lived and wrote her stories there.

Japanese tourists (pictured at Hill Top) are among the frequent visitors to Potter's home. Merchandisers in Japan estimate that 80% of the population have heard of Peter Rabbit.[68]

The tenant farmer John Cannon and his family agreed to stay on to manage the farm for her while she made physical improvements and learned the techniques of fell farming and of raising livestock, including pigs, cows and chickens; the following year she added sheep. Realising she needed to protect her boundaries, she sought advice from W.H. Heelis & Son, a local firm of solicitors with offices in nearby Hawkshead. With William Heelis acting for her, she bought contiguous pasture, and in 1909 the 20 acres (8.1 ha) Castle Farm across the road from Hill Top Farm. She visited Hill Top at every opportunity, and her books written during this period (such as The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, about the local shop in Near Sawrey and The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, a wood mouse) reflect her increasing participation in village life and her delight in country living.[69]

Owning and managing these working farms required routine collaboration with the widely respected William Heelis. By the summer of 1912, Heelis had proposed marriage and Potter had accepted; although she did not immediately tell her parents, who once again disapproved because Heelis was only a country solicitor. Potter and Heelis were married on 15 October 1913 in London at St Mary Abbots in Kensington. The couple moved immediately to Near Sawrey, residing at Castle Cottage, the renovated farmhouse on Castle Farm, which was 34 acres large. Hill Top remained a working farm but was now remodelled to allow for the tenant family and Potter's private studio and workshop. At last her own woman, Potter settled into the partnerships that shaped the rest of her life: her country solicitor husband and his large family, her farms, the Sawrey community and the predictable rounds of country life. The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and The Tale of Tom Kitten are representative of Hill Top Farm and her farming life and reflect her happiness with her country life.[70]

Rupert Potter died in 1914 and, with the outbreak of World War I, Potter, now a wealthy woman, persuaded her mother to move to the Lake District and found a property for her to rent in Sawrey. Finding life in Sawrey dull, Helen Potter soon moved to Lindeth Howe (now a 34-bedroomed hotel), a large house the Potters had previously rented for the summer in Bowness, on the other side of Lake Windermere.[71] Potter continued to write stories for Frederick Warne & Co and fully participated in country life. She established a Nursing Trust for local villages and served on various committees and councils responsible for footpaths and other rural issues.[72]

Soon after acquiring Hill Top Farm, Potter became keenly interested in the breeding and raising of Herdwick sheep, the indigenous fell sheep. In 1923 she bought a large sheep farm in the Troutbeck Valley called Troutbeck Park Farm, formerly a deer park, restoring its land with thousands of Herdwick sheep. This established her as one of the major Herdwick sheep farmers in the county. She was admired by her shepherds and farm managers for her willingness to experiment with the latest biological remedies for the common diseases of sheep, and for her employment of the best shepherds, sheep breeders, and farm managers.[73]

By the late 1920s, Potter and her Hill Top farm manager Tom Storey had made a name for their prize-winning Herdwick flock, which took many prizes at the local agricultural shows, where Potter was often asked to serve as a judge. In 1942 she became President-elect of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders' Association, the first time a woman had been elected, but died before taking office.[74]

In one of her diary entries whilst travelling through Wales, Potter complained about the Welsh language. She wrote "Machynlleth, wretched town, hardly a person could speak English", continuing "Welsh seem a pleasant intelligent race, but I should think awkward to live with... the language is past description."[75][76]

1. The Tale of Peter Rabbit (privately printed, 250 copies, 1901)
   • The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)
2. The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903)
3. The Tailor of Gloucester (1903)
4. The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904)
5. The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904)
6. The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (1905)
7. The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan (1905)
8. The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (1906)
9. The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit (1906)
10. The Story of Miss Moppet (1906)
11. The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907)
12. The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908)
13. The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or, The Roly-Poly Pudding (1908)
14. The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909)
15. The Tale of Ginger and Pickles (1909)
16. The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910)
17. The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes (1911)
18. The Tale of Mr. Tod (1912)
19. The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913)
20. Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes (1917)
21. The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse (1918)
22. Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes (1922)
23. The Tale of Little Pig Robinson (1930)

1. Peter Rabbit's Painting Book (1911)
2. Tom Kitten's Painting Book (1917)
3. Jemima Puddle-Duck's Painting Book (1925)
4. Peter Rabbit's Almanac for 1929 (1928)
5. The Fairy Caravan (1929)
6. Sister Anne (illustrated by Katharine Sturges) (1932)
7. Wag-by-Wall (decorations by J. J. Lankes) (1944)
8. The Tale of the Faithful Dove (illustrated by Marie Angel) (1955, 1970)
9. The Sly Old Cat (written 1906; first published 1971)
10. The Tale of Tuppenny (illustrated by Marie Angel) (1973)
11. The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots (2016)[92] (Illustrated by Quentin Blake.)
12. Red Riding Hood (2019) (Illustrated by Helen Oxenbury.)

• Potter, Beatrix (1982). Jane Crowell Morse (ed.). Beatrix Potter's Americans: Selected Letters. The Horn Book, Inc. ISBN 978-0-87675-282-1.
• Potter, Beatrix (1992). Judy Taylor (ed.). Beatrix Potter's Letters. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-3437-1.
• Potter, Beatrix (1992). Judy Taylor (ed.). Letters to Children from Beatrix Potter. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-4195-9.
• Potter, Beatrix (1977). Margaret Crawford Maloney (ed.). Dear Ivy, Dear June: Letters from Beatrix Potter. Toronto Public Library. ISBN 978-0-8037-2050-3.
• Potter, Beatrix. (rev. 1989). The Journal of Beatrix Potter, 1881–1897, transcribed from her code writings by Leslie Linder. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-3625-2
• Potter, Beatrix (1987). Leslie Linder (ed.). A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-3562-0.

• Hobbs, Anne Stevenson (1989). Beatrix Potter's Art. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 0-7232-3598-8.
• Hobbs, Anne Stevenson (1990). Beatrix Potter's Art. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-3598-9.
• Hobbs, Anne Stevenson (2005). Beatrix Potter: Artist and Illustrator. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-5700-4.
• Jay, Eileen, Mary Noble & Anne Stevenson Hobbs (1992). A Victorian Naturalist: Beatrix Potter's Drawings from the Armitt Collection. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-3990-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Taylor, Judy, Joyce Irene Whalley, Anne Stevenson Hobbs & Elizabeth M. Battrick (1987). Beatrix Potter, 1866–1943: The Artist and Her World. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-3561-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

• Mainetti, Riccardo (2021). Finding Beatrix Potter. flower-ed. ISBN 9788885628915.
• Battrick, Elizabeth (1999). Beatrix Potter: The Unknown Years. Armitt Library and Museum and F.Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-4608-4.
• Delaney, Frank (23 July 2014). "The Tale of Beatrix Potter". The Public Domain Review. 4 (15). Retrieved 23 July 2014. This year (2014), the works of one of the most successful and universal writers of all time came into the public domain in many countries around the world.
• Denyer, Susan (2000). Beatrix Potter: At Home with Beatrix Potter: The Creator of Peter Rabbit. Harry Abrams. ISBN 978-0-7112-3018-7.
• Gristwood, Sarah (2016). The Story of Beatrix Potter. Pavilion Books. ISBN 9781909881808.
• Heelis, John (1999). The Tale of Mrs William Heelis – Beatrix Potter. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7509-3432-9.
• Kelly, Matthew (2022). The Women Who Saved the English Countryside. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-27039-6.
• Lane, Margaret (2001). The Tale of Beatrix Potter: A Biography (Revised ed.). F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-4676-3.
• Lane, Margaret (1978). The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-2108-1.
• Lear, Linda (2007). Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature. St. Martin's. ISBN 978-0-312-36934-7.
• Lear, Linda (2008). Beatrix Potter: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-100310-8.
• MacDonald, Ruth K (1986). Beatrix Potter. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-6917-3.
• Mitchell, W.R. (2010). Beatrix Potter: Her Lakeland Years. Great Northern Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-905080-71-7.
• Taylor, Judy (1996). Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller and Countrywoman (Revised ed.). F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-4175-1.
• Taylor, Judy (2002). That Naughty Rabbit: Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit. F. Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-4767-8.
• Taylor, Judy, ed. (1993). 'So I Shall Tell You a Story...': Encounters with Beatrix Potter. F.Warne & Co. ISBN 978-0-7232-4025-9.
• Taylor, Judy. "Potter, (Helen) Beatrix (1866–1943)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 13 July 2016. Retrieved 14 January 2007.