![\"Sketch](\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Sketch-for-the-privately-printed-edition-of-The-Tale-of-Peter-RabbitW.jpg\")
<\/a>The following October, one of the publishers that had turned her down, Frederick Warne, put out a version of the book\u2014with Potter turning her black-and-white illustrations into color. The story was much the same\u2014except for the addition of Peter\u2019s mother\u2019s grim explanation of why the little rabbits shouldn\u2019t trespass in Mr. McGregor\u2019s garden: \u201cYour Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. Gregor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Potter wasn\u2019t fond of the new cover with its \u201cidiotic prancing rabbit.\u201d But in a in a Dec. 20, 1902, review, The New York Times said: \u201cIt is a tiny story in a tiny book, with only a paragraph to each page picture. The pictures are delightful in drawing and color and the cover is attractive, boards covered with a rough, reddish chocolate paper and a portrait of \u2018Peter Rabbit\u2019 in colors in the center.\u201d<\/p>\n
By Christmas, \u201cPeter Rabbit\u201d had sold 20,000 copies. It\u2019s gone on to sell millions. \u201cThe public must be fond of rabbits!\u201d Potter wrote to her publisher, Norman Warne, in November 1903. \u201cWhat an appalling quantity of Peter.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1903, Potter produced \u201cThe Tale of Squirrel Nutkin\u201d and \u201cThe Tailor of Gloucester.\u201d She published two or three tales a year until 1913, they eventually totaled about two dozen\u2014Benjamin Bunny, Two Bad Mice, Jeremy Fisher, Timmy Tiptoes, Tom Kitten, the Flopsy Bunnies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is much more satisfactory to address a real live child,\u201d Potter once wrote. \u201cI often think that that was the secret of the success of \u2018Peter Rabbit,\u2019 it was written to a child\u2014not made to order.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA \u2018Town Mouse\u2019 Longing To Be a \u2018Country Mouse\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The exhibition \u201cBeatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature\u201d at London\u2019s Victoria and Albert Museum<\/a> from Feb. 12, 2022, to Jan. 8, 2023, showcases more than 200 of her personal objects including artworks, scientific drawings, letters, manuscripts, sketches, coded diaries, family photographs, commercial merchandise and artifacts\u2014down to Potter\u2019s clogs and her walking cane, with its built-in magnifying glass for getting close-up views of nature, from her Hill Top home in Britain\u2019s Lake District.<\/p>\n The show was co-curated by Annemarie Bilclough, a curator of illustration at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Helen Antrobus, an assistant national curator at the conservation charity, the National Trust, to which Potter was a major donor. The pieces are drawn primarily from the two institutions\u2019 collections.<\/p>\n Helen Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866, and lived for much of the first 47 years of her life at her wealthy family’s large house at 2 Bolton Gardens in Kensington, then a semi-rural part of London. Her paternal grandfather owned a calico printing factory, co-founded the Manchester School of Design, and was later a minister of parliament. Her maternal grandfather inherited a cotton mill. Her mother Helen and father Rupert painted and drew, and her father took up photography, often photographing Beatrix, who became a photographer too. Their friends included the English pre-Raphaelite painter John Millais.<\/p>\n Beatrix Potter was enamored by the natural world. She and her brother were educated at home by a series of governesses, and their schoolroom was home to frogs, a tortoise, a hedgehog, salamanders, bats, mice and rabbits. A cabinet in the corner was filled with mounted and identified insects, shells, birds’ eggs, rocks and fossils. Potter studied drawing and painting. She became a skilled scientific illustrator, sketching the plant and animal collections at the Natural History Museum, drawing what she saw through microscopes, studying mushrooms.<\/p>\n In 1890, Potter illustrated for a greeting card company\u2014her first commission. Her scientific paper on fungi, \u201cOn the Germination of Spores of the Agaricineae,\u201d was read at the Linnean Society of London in 1897\u2014women were not allowed to make presentations, so a man presented it instead. Then she meandered into children\u2019s books. \u201cI painted most of the little pictures mainly to please myself,\u201d Potter wrote. \u201cThe more spontaneous the pleasure, the more happy the result.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeatrix Potter was a \u2018town mouse\u2019 longing to be a \u2018country mouse,\u2019\u201daccording to Bilclough. \u201c\u2026Her talent at making her characters real emerged from a long-standing curiosity for the small details of nature, which could have led her down a different career path.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHere I Go To Be Quiet\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Potter drew from life and wrote in an astringent, unsentimental fashion (even more so in her diary and letters). \u201cMy rabbit Bounce came to a premature end through persistent devotion to peppermints,\u201d which ruined his teeth, Potter wrote in a letter published in The Field newspaper in January 1902. \u201cThe toothache ended in a tumor, so he had to be destroyed. His successor, Peter, was in my possession for nine years; I then had him chloroformed, as he was getting very feeble.\u201d<\/p>\n Potter declined her publisher\u2019s invitation to illustrate books written by other others, saying in a February 1904 letter: \u201cI enjoy inventing stories\u2014any number\u2014but I draw so slowly & laboriously, that there are sure to be favorites of my own left undone at the end of my working life-time, whether short or long.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1905, a month after Potter became engaged to her editor, Norman Warne\u2014a marriage her parents opposed\u2014Warne died suddenly from lymphatic leukemia.<\/p>\n A few months later, with income from her books (\u201cIt is pleasant to feel I could earn my own living,\u201d she\u2019d written to her publishers), Potter bought Hill Top Farm, a 34-acre working farm and two-story farmhouse dating to the 17th century in Near Sawrey, near Esthwaite Water in the Lake District.<\/p>\n Potter had come to love the Lake District through visits on family holidays beginning in 1882: \u201cMy brother & I were born in London, but our descent\u2014our interest and our joy was in the North Country.\u201d She threw herself into starting a garden and renovating the farm and battling rats. The place inspired 1907\u2019s \u201cThe Tale of Tom Kitten\u201d and 1908\u2019s \u201cThe Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck,\u201d among others.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is in here I go to be quiet and still with myself,\u201d Potter once told a relation. \u201cThis is me, the deepest me, the part one has to be alone with.\u201d<\/p>\n Potter was short and blue-eyed, and determined to find her own way. \u201cI am not eminent,\u201d she wrote to an American publisher, \u201cbut a plain person who believes in saying what she thinks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou are a great deal too much afraid of the public for whom I have never cared one tuppenny-button,\u201d she wrote to her British publisher. \u201cI am sure that it is an attitude of mind which has enabled me to keep up the series. Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1909, Potter purchased the property across the road, Castle Farm. She became close to a county attorney named William Heelis, of whom her parents disapproved. Nevertheless the couple married in 1913, when she was 47, and she finally moved out of her parents\u2019 London house, settling permanently at Castle Cottage.<\/p>\n Potter devoted herself more and more to farming and less and less to books. \u201cI do feel ashamed of my delay over the book, I have seemed so rushed lately, probably I will get more time to sit down after this week. I have just come in after a rough two hours search for some sheep & lambs \u2026 We got them; so that is done with,\u201d she wrote to her publisher, Fruing Warne, in May 1918. \u201cSomehow when one is up to the eyes in work with real live animals it makes one despise paper-book animals\u2014but I mustn\u2019t say that to my publisher!\u201d<\/p>\n Potter\u2019s later publications were often cobbled together from drawings she\u2019d drafted many years earlier. The last storybook she authored and illustrated was 1930\u2019s \u201cThe Tale of Little Pig Robinson.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t suppose I shall be able to continue these damned little books when I am dead and buried!!\u201d Potter fumed at Fruing Warne in November 1919. \u201cI am utterly tired of doing them, and my eyes are wearing out. I will try to do you one or two more for the good of the old firm; but it is quite time I had rest from them. Especially as there is still other work that I should like to finish for my own pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1923, Potter bought the sheep farm Troutbeck Park, one of the largest farms in the Lake District, to preserve it from development. Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley introduced her to the hardy but endangered Herdwick sheep that she raised. Rawnsley was also one of the founders of the National Trust and inspired Potter to pursue land conservation. Income from her books funded property acquisitions. World War II came. \u201cThe sheep and cattle take no notice,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n When Helen Beatrix Potter Heelis died at home at Castle Cottage on Dec. 22, 1943, at age 77, her estate was valued at $846,544 (about $13.5 million today). She left 15 farms and more than 4,000 acres to the National Trust. Her ashes were scattered at Hill Top.<\/p>\n \u201cHill Top is to be presented to my visitors,\u201d she wrote in her will, \u201cas if I had just gone out and they had just missed me.\u201d And so it is, with her garden clogs and straw hat and grandfather clock and trophies for sheep breeding. There\u2019s even a mouse hole you might recognize from \u201cRoly-Poly Pudding,\u201d and outside you\u2019ll find the rhubarb patch where Jemima Puddle-Duck tried to hide her eggs.<\/p>\n If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n Sources:<\/strong> If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMy dear Noel, I don\u2019t know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter,\u201d Beatrix Potter confided in a September 1893 letter to the ill 5-year-old son of her former governess, Annie Moore. Writing from her vacation in Scotland, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,107],"tags":[960,211],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21219"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21390,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21219\/revisions\/21390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
ca. 1892 \u2013 1901. Linder Bequest \u00a9 Victoria and Albert Museum, London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/a>
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\n\u2022 Claire Armitstead, \u201cHow Beatrix Potter Self-Published Peter Rabbit,\u201d Guardian, Dec. 17, 2013. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/booksblog\/2013\/dec\/17\/beatrix-potter-peter-rabbit-self-publishing
\n\u2022\u00a0Helen Bevington, \u201c\u2018A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter\u2019 by Leslie Linder,\u201d The New York Times, July 18, 1971.
\n\u2022\u00a0Walter de la Mare, \u201cPeter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter and Friends,\u201d The New York Times, Sept. 7, 1952.
\n\u2022 Mandy L. DeWilde, \u201cVictorian Restriction, Restraint, and Escape in the Children\u2019s Tales of Beatrix Potter,\u201d masters theses for Grand Valley State University, 2008.
\n\u2022 Anne T. Eaton, \u201cTwo Well-Loved Names,\u201d The New York Times Nov. 10, 1946.
\n\u2022\u00a0Grace Glueck, \u201cPeter Rabbit Looks Back at 75,\u201d The New York Times, April 1, 1977.
\n\u2022 Rumor Godden, \u201cFrom Beatrix with Love,\u201d The New York Times, May 8 1966
\n\u2022 Sarah Gristwood, \u201cThe Story of Beatrix Potter,\u201d The National Trust (Rizzoli), 2016.
\n\u2022 Kathryn Hughes, \u201cRun Rabbit Run\u2026,\u201d Guardian, Oct. 7, 2005.
\n\u2022 Selma G Lanes, \u201cThese D\u2026d Little Books,\u201d The New York Times, March 4, 1990.
\n\u2022 Linda Lear, \u201cAbout Beatrix Potter,\u201d The Beatrix Potter Society, 2011. https:\/\/beatrixpottersociety.org.uk\/about-beatrix\/?doing_wp_cron=1647343163.0384271144866943359375
\n\u2022\u00a0Leslie Linder (\u201ctranscribed from her code writing by\u201d), \u201cThe Journal of Beatrix Potter from 1881 to 1897,\u201d Frederick Warne & Co., 1966.
\n\u2022\u00a0Leonard Marcus, \u201cThe Hand Behind Flopsy and Mopsy,\u201d The New York Times, April 26, 1987.
\n\u2022 Claire Masset, \u201cBeatrix Potter\u2019s Hill Top,\u201d The National Trust Magazine, summer 2016. https:\/\/www.nationaltrust.org.uk\/features\/beatrix-potters-hill-top
\n\u2022 Peter Mikelbank, \u201cBunny Boiler! Was the Beloved Creator of Peter Rabbit a Bunny-Cooking Vivisectionist?\u201d The Washington Post, Aug. 31 1997.
\n\u2022\u00a0Adrian Mitchell, \u201cImaginative Victorian,\u201d The New York Times, Sept. 18, 1966.
\n\u2022 National Trust, \u201cBeatrix Potter\u2019s Early Life and Books,\u201d National Trust: https:\/\/www.nationaltrust.org.uk\/beatrix-potter-gallery-and-hawkshead\/features\/beatrix-potters-early-life-and-books
\n\u2022\u00a0New York Times, \u201cBeatrix Potter Left $846,544,\u201d The New York Times, March 8, 1944.
\n\u2022\u00a0New York Times, \u201cBeatrix Potter\u2019s Life Becomes a Lake District Travelogue,\u201d The New York Times, Jan. 21, 2007.
\n\u2022 New York Times, \u201cChildren\u2019s Books: Fairy Stories, Picture Books, and Lively Tales of Adventure,\u201d The New York Times, Dec. 5, 1903.
\n\u2022 New York Times, \u201cChildren\u2019s Books: Happy Hearts, Dolls\u2019 Houses, Bad Mice, Sentimental Rabbits, and Other Nursery Subjects,\u201d The New York Times, Dec. 3, 1904.
\n\u2022 New York Times, \u201cMore Juveniles: Concluding Notice of Children\u2019s Books for the Holiday Season,\u201d The New York Times, Dec. 20, 1902.
\n\u2022\u00a0Eric Pace, \u201cPeter Rabbit, Still Frisky at 80,\u201d The New York Times, Dec. 13, 1981.
\n\u2022 Claire Potter, \u201cBeatrix Potter\u2019s Hill Top house, the Lakes,\u201d Guardian, June 1, 2018. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/travel\/2018\/jun\/01\/beatrix-potter-house-hill-top-lake-district-review
\n\u2022 Anna Russell, \u201cThe Secret Life of Beatrix Potter,\u201d The New Yorker, March 12, 2022.
\n\u2022 Katy Stoddard, \u201cHow the Guardian Covered the Life of Beatrix Potter,\u201d The Guardian, July 28, 2016. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/from-the-archive-blog\/2016\/jul\/28\/beatrix-potter-anniversary-150-reviews
\n\u2022 Judy Taylor, editor, \u201cBeatrix Potter\u2019s Letters,\u201d Frederick Warne, 1989.
\n\u2022 Victoria and Albert Museum, \u201cBeatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature Opens at the V&A\u201d press release, \u2022 Victoria and Albert Museum, February 2022.
\n\u2022 Victoria and Albert Museum, \u201cIntroducing Beatrix Potter,\u201d Victoria and Albert Museum, 2022. https:\/\/www.vam.ac.uk\/articles\/introducing-beatrix-potter
\n\u2022\u00a0Emily Zach et al. \u201cThe Art of Beatrix Potter: Sketches, Paintings, and Illustrations,\u201d Chronicle Books, 2016.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
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