Beatrix Potter, the writer of one of the most beloved children ’ south book of all time, The Tale of Peter Rabbit ( 1902 ), was a woman of huge talent, indefatigable spirit, and generous heart. Helen Beatrix, the eldest of the two children of Rupert and Helen ( Leech ) Potter, was born on 28 July 1866 at 2 Bolton Gardens, South Kensington, London. Although Beatrix and her buddy, Walter Bertram ( 1872-1918 ), grew up in London, both were deeply influenced by long class holidays in the countryside, first in Scotland and later in the English Lake District, and by their northerly roots .
As was the custom in families of her course, Beatrix was educated at home by respective governesses. An eager scholar of languages and literature, she grew up loving classical folk and fagot tales, rhymes and riddles. Her talent for drawing and painting was discovered early and encouraged. She drew her own versions of such stories as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Alice ’ second Adventures in Wonderland .
Beatrix besides wrote imaginatively about her pets. She and Bertram kept a count of much-loved and intensely note animals in their classroom. In addition to rabbits, a hedgehog, some shiner and bats, they had collections of insects – all identified and properly mounted – and all were drawn with the same accuracy that would late mark Beatrix as a spot naturalist .
early kin holidays were spent at Dalguise, a state house in Perthshire, Scotland. Allowed exemption to explore, Beatrix honed her ability to observe the details of the natural world. In 1882 the Potters began taking their holidays in the Lake District. Country animation appealed profoundly to Potter and years belated she made her home there and produced some of her finest oeuvre.
From 1881 to 1897 Potter kept a Journal in which she recorded her activities, angstrom well as opinions about society, art and current events. It was written in a code she invented herself, which was not deciphered until 1958. In her sketchbook Beatrix practised notice by drawing ; in her Journal she practised it by writing. Both skills were overriding to the success of her books for children .
Although Potter had sold some of her artwork for greetings cards and illustrations in the early 1890s, she devoted most of her energy to the study of natural history – archeology, geology, entomology and, particularly, mycology. Fungi appealed to Potter ’ s imagination, both for their evanescent habits and for their coloration. Encouraged by Charles McIntosh, a idolize scots naturalist, to make her fungus drawings more technically accurate, Potter not only produced beautiful watercolours, but besides became an adept scientific illustrator. By 1896 Potter had developed her own theory of how fungi spores reproduced and wrote a newspaper, ‘ On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae ‘. This was presented to a meet of the Linnean Society on 1 April 1897 by one of the mycologists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, since women could not attend Society meetings. Her newspaper has since been lost .
Beatrix besides wrote visualize letters to children she knew and in 1901 she turned one into her inaugural book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and produced her own privately printed version of it. The mind had been turned down by respective commercial publishers, but Frederick Warne published it in 1902 after Beatrix agreed to redo her black-and-white illustrations in color. The trace year, under the editorial supervision of Norman Warne, Potter produced The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester. All were enormous commercial successes. Twenty more little books followed at the rate of two or three a class. A womanhood of unusual entrepreneurial ace, Beatrix Potter besides registered a Peter Rabbit doll in 1903, recognising that ‘ by-product ’ trade such as painting books, board games, and printed wallpapers would be marketing assets for her function.
In 1905 Beatrix and Norman Warne became unofficially engaged but Potter ’ s parents objected to her engagement because the publisher was ‘ in trade ’. sadly, Norman died of leukemia only a calendar month former. But Beatrix proceeded with plans to buy Hill Top Farm, a small working farm in Near Sawrey, a Lake District village then in Lancashire. The farm became her sanctuary, a set where she could come to paint and write arsenic well as learn grow management. Some of her best books, such as The Tale of Tom Kitten ( 1907 ), The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck ( 1908 ) and The Tale of Samuel Whiskers ( 1908 ), reflect her joy in the erstwhile farmhouse and in farming life .
Four years subsequently, in 1909, Beatrix purchased Castle Farm, a second property in Sawrey fair across the road from Hill Top. Her ambition to own state in the Lake District and to preserve it from development was encouraged by William Heelis, a local solicitor.
In 1913, at the senesce of forty-seven, Beatrix Potter married Heelis and moved into Castle Cottage on Castle Farm. Becoming deeply involved in the community, she served on committees to improve rural know, opposed hydroplanes on Lake Windermere, founded a nursing trust to improve local health care, and developed a heat for breeding and raising Herdwick sheep. In 1923 she bought Troutbeck Park, an enormous but disease-ridden sheep farm which she restored to agrarian health. She became one of the most admired Herdwick breeders in the region and won prizes at all the local shows. The Heelises were besides enthusiastic supporters of nation conservation and early benefactors of the National Trust. In 1930 Beatrix became de facto land agent for the Trust, managing some of their farms, arsenic well as her own, over a huge part of the Lake District .
Beatrix continued to write, her diminished eyesight and her exuberance for farming mean that The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, published in 1930, was the last little reserve. In 1926 she had besides published a longer reserve, The Fairy Caravan, in the United States, but because she thought it besides autobiographical it did not appear commercially in England until nine years after her death .
Beatrix Potter Heelis died on 22 December 1943. She bequeathed fifteen farms and over 4,000 acres to the National Trust – a endow which protected and conserved the alone Lake District countryside. Her books, her art, her Herdwick sheep and her indomitable intent are all share of her enormous bequest .
