What do you think?
Rate this book
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
In this now classic biography, reissued in a new edition for the 150th anniversary of Beatrix Potter's birth, Linda Lear offers the astonishing portrait of an extraordinary woman who gave us some of the most beloved children's books of all time.
Potter found freedom from her conventional Victorian upbringing in the countryside. Nature inspired her imagination as an artist and scientific illustrator, but The Tale of Peter Rabbit brought her fame, financial success, and the promise of happiness when she fell in love with her editor Norman Warne. After his tragic and untimely death, Potter embraced a new life as the owner of Hill Top Farm in the English Lake District and a second chance at happiness. As a visionary landowner, successful farmer and sheep-breeder, she was able to preserve the landscape that had inspired her art.
Beatrix A Life in Nature reveals a lively, independent, and passionate woman, whose art was timeless, and whose generosity left an indelible imprint on the countryside. This anniversary edition is complete with a brand new foreword by James Rebanks, the Lake District shepherd and social media sensation who chronicles his world on Twitter and in his wonderful book, "A Shepherd's Life".
Potter found freedom from her conventional Victorian upbringing in the countryside. Nature inspired her imagination as an artist and scientific illustrator, but The Tale of Peter Rabbit brought her fame, financial success, and the promise of happiness when she fell in love with her editor Norman Warne. After his tragic and untimely death, Potter embraced a new life as the owner of Hill Top Farm in the English Lake District and a second chance at happiness. As a visionary landowner, successful farmer and sheep-breeder, she was able to preserve the landscape that had inspired her art.
Beatrix A Life in Nature reveals a lively, independent, and passionate woman, whose art was timeless, and whose generosity left an indelible imprint on the countryside. This anniversary edition is complete with a brand new foreword by James Rebanks, the Lake District shepherd and social media sensation who chronicles his world on Twitter and in his wonderful book, "A Shepherd's Life".
640 pages, Paperback
First published December 19, 2006
241 people are currently reading
6146 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 342 reviews
April 13, 2016
Getting to know Beatrix Potter has been a slow unfolding for me and started in a funny place. In my early twenties I worked in a record store that was next to a gift shop. That gift shop is where I fell in love with Beatrix Potter's little character figurines made by F. Warne & Co. Ltd. in Beswick, England in the 40's and 50's: Jemima Puddle-Duck, Foxy Whiskered Gentleman, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle to name a few. I would get my paycheck at the record store where I worked behind the counter and run next door to make the hard choice: who would it be that day, which little spot of light would be next, Aunt Pettitoes OR Timmy Willy?
No matter where I've lived, these little critters have been on a shelf somewhere in my kitchen. Right now they are on a window ledge in front of my kitchen sink on Martha's Vineyard where I can see them as I do dishes or make dinner. I loved the colors used in these figures, very much like the colors in the old quilts I collected. For me, it really wasn't Beatrix Potter's "little books" that first attracted me. It was color, and as I learned more about Beatrix Potter the person, it was simply just her.
As the years passed, bit by bit, her life story came into my knowing, and the more I knew, the more interested I became, until it became clear that I was going to have to go "find her" in the Lake District in England ~ go to her cottage called Hill Top Farm, which she left (to be opened to the public) exactly as it was when she died in 1943. I finally did that last year, walked past the little lamb meadow, down the garden path to Beatrix Potter's house ... you can read about that visit and see photos here: http://www.susanbranch.com/beatrix-po...
I think I've read almost everything about her now. I loved being immersed in this book, it was like being there with her. It's a scholarly book, with many, many details. But I loved every one of them. Beatrix Potter was a brave, hard-working, determined, inspired woman, who never let reality get her down, rose above all, and carved out an original life all her own. I love her. Thank you to Linda Lear and everyone who contributed to this book for their in-depth gathering of the facts because inquiring minds do want to know.
No matter where I've lived, these little critters have been on a shelf somewhere in my kitchen. Right now they are on a window ledge in front of my kitchen sink on Martha's Vineyard where I can see them as I do dishes or make dinner. I loved the colors used in these figures, very much like the colors in the old quilts I collected. For me, it really wasn't Beatrix Potter's "little books" that first attracted me. It was color, and as I learned more about Beatrix Potter the person, it was simply just her.
As the years passed, bit by bit, her life story came into my knowing, and the more I knew, the more interested I became, until it became clear that I was going to have to go "find her" in the Lake District in England ~ go to her cottage called Hill Top Farm, which she left (to be opened to the public) exactly as it was when she died in 1943. I finally did that last year, walked past the little lamb meadow, down the garden path to Beatrix Potter's house ... you can read about that visit and see photos here: http://www.susanbranch.com/beatrix-po...
I think I've read almost everything about her now. I loved being immersed in this book, it was like being there with her. It's a scholarly book, with many, many details. But I loved every one of them. Beatrix Potter was a brave, hard-working, determined, inspired woman, who never let reality get her down, rose above all, and carved out an original life all her own. I love her. Thank you to Linda Lear and everyone who contributed to this book for their in-depth gathering of the facts because inquiring minds do want to know.
September 21, 2021
Although this book took me a while to get into I eventually fell in love with it and its subject Beatrix Potter. So many thoughts come crowding in. I related so much to her wrangling with her unscrupulous publisher. I vividly recalled my own walks in the Lake District and even the most glorious hike from the ferry to Hill Top Farm. I relived many, many moments of reading her books aloud to children and grandchildren. I loved how the book chronicled the writing of each one. I loved how Beatrix remade herself over and over again each time spinning off of what she learned before. I could easily pick this right back up and read it again.
But oh, to be in England..
But oh, to be in England..
January 18, 2018
Despite that Goodreads insisted on giving this a 2-star rating, on my behalf, even before I finished reading it, I enjoyed this book very much. While it was read at quite a gallop because ILL was calling it back, it nonetheless made an impression on me which I will go back and revisit when I have more time.
Linda Lear is the perfect biographer, providing the reader with just the right balance of good story-telling and solid research. I appreciated that she didn't fall into the realm of conjecture, as many biographers do, thus colouring the reader's perception in favour of the biographer's inclinations; and I doubly appreciated the thick pages of notes that followed, at the back of the book. (I'm an inveterate note reader, and chaser.)
I was always fascinated with Beatrix Potter, all the more so because she wasn't part of my cultural background: I didn't come to her until I started reading these to my own daughter, many years ago. I don't know, in the end, who delighted in them more, for we were both enthralled, spending many, many hours rereading them when she was just a wee little thing. (I confess to reading them on my own later and delighting in them all over again.)
But, what I knew about Beatrix Potter, the woman, could have been placed into the tailor of Gloucester's thimble, and so I was thrilled to find the gifted natural scientist behind the paintings. She was doubly blessed to have the talent to observe and record the natural world, both as a scientist and an artist. I was as fascinated with her life as I was with her children's books. She was a strong, independent spirit who took life on her own terms, without sacrificing herself to the Victorian moralities, and the too-often penance of selling oneself to the highest (male) bidder.
Linda Lear includes a a respectable number of photographs from different phases of BP's life, as well as a small collection of the artist's paintings.
I will have to buy this book -- and return to it at leisure.
Linda Lear is the perfect biographer, providing the reader with just the right balance of good story-telling and solid research. I appreciated that she didn't fall into the realm of conjecture, as many biographers do, thus colouring the reader's perception in favour of the biographer's inclinations; and I doubly appreciated the thick pages of notes that followed, at the back of the book. (I'm an inveterate note reader, and chaser.)
I was always fascinated with Beatrix Potter, all the more so because she wasn't part of my cultural background: I didn't come to her until I started reading these to my own daughter, many years ago. I don't know, in the end, who delighted in them more, for we were both enthralled, spending many, many hours rereading them when she was just a wee little thing. (I confess to reading them on my own later and delighting in them all over again.)
But, what I knew about Beatrix Potter, the woman, could have been placed into the tailor of Gloucester's thimble, and so I was thrilled to find the gifted natural scientist behind the paintings. She was doubly blessed to have the talent to observe and record the natural world, both as a scientist and an artist. I was as fascinated with her life as I was with her children's books. She was a strong, independent spirit who took life on her own terms, without sacrificing herself to the Victorian moralities, and the too-often penance of selling oneself to the highest (male) bidder.
Linda Lear includes a a respectable number of photographs from different phases of BP's life, as well as a small collection of the artist's paintings.
I will have to buy this book -- and return to it at leisure.
August 22, 2024
If I was to try to explain why I love Beatrix Potter's books so much, I would have to say it is the attention to detail - the simply beautiful precision of the anthropomorphic drawings, the "truth" in the animals' characterisations which whilst whimsical are by no means idealistic and show nature to have a hard edge, the economy of the prose, each phrase carefully chosen to propel the story forward at the correct pace - and of course the humour.
Well, Linda Lear manages to emulate her subject - the accompanying photographs not only give us Beatrix's drawings of her pets and woodland fungi but also courtesy of her father's keen interest in photography, portraits of the young Beatrix of astounding quality. What can't be done in such a rich life is do it justice in anything less than the 450 pages of text and 75 pages of references - but stick with it, it tells of a curiously compartmented life - through a cosseted childhood which unfortunately becomes stifling to the highly intelligent young woman - the almost accidental emergence of the author of hugely successful children's books - and finally personal and intellectual fulfilment through a late marriage, a passion for hill farming, and her other lasting legacy, the conservation of the landscape of her adopted home, the Lake District. Can't recommend this book too highly.
Well, Linda Lear manages to emulate her subject - the accompanying photographs not only give us Beatrix's drawings of her pets and woodland fungi but also courtesy of her father's keen interest in photography, portraits of the young Beatrix of astounding quality. What can't be done in such a rich life is do it justice in anything less than the 450 pages of text and 75 pages of references - but stick with it, it tells of a curiously compartmented life - through a cosseted childhood which unfortunately becomes stifling to the highly intelligent young woman - the almost accidental emergence of the author of hugely successful children's books - and finally personal and intellectual fulfilment through a late marriage, a passion for hill farming, and her other lasting legacy, the conservation of the landscape of her adopted home, the Lake District. Can't recommend this book too highly.
March 7, 2008
If you have fond memories of the Tale of Peter Rabbit from your childhood; or if you have an interest in women who bravely challenged a social destiny that seemed foregone and inevitable; or if you are interested in naturalism and the history of preservation, you will enjoy and learn from Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, by environmental historian Linda Lear.
Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866 to wealthy Victorian parents. From early childhood, she was passionately interested in the natural world and drew what she saw in meticulous, painstaking detail, using as models the many animals that she and her brother collected during family holidays. These animal drawings became increasingly imaginative until they at last came to life in the delightful characters that populate The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and other books, all of which became phenomenal bestsellers.
In 1905, after the death of her fiancé and editor, Norman Warne, Potter used the royalties from her books and a small inheritance from an aunt to purchase a farm in the hamlet of Near Sawrey, in the Lake District. There, she met Willie Heelis, a country lawyer who in 1913 became her husband, and together they set about fulfilling a dream they shared: preserving and protecting the Lake District from the despoliation of commercial development. They lived and worked happily together until 1943, when Beatrix Potter Heelis died.
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature is the most exhaustive and rigorous examination of Potter's life to date. Linda Lear skillfully covers the material that's been been made available by earlier biographers, Margaret Lane and Judy Taylor: the solitary childhood, the astonishing literary success, the dutiful attention to elderly parents, the retirement to marriage and rural farming life. But Lear breaks a good deal of new ground, as well, taking us deep into the experience of a gifted but very private woman with a "talent for reinventing herself." She not only tells the riveting story of a woman who seems to have led three lives, but also fully and meticulously documents her sources. Scholars will appreciate the endnotes, sources, references, and lists of primary and secondary material that Lear has provided, for it is the first time in the history of Potter scholarship that such a full and complete documentation has been made.
However, Lear never allows her responsibilities as a scholar to overshadow her fascination with the human story of Beatrix Potter. With tact, sensitivity, and a profound respect, she goes deeply within her subject to bring us a woman whose tragedies and triumphs seem very personal, compellingly immediate, and entirely real. Lear demonstrates that throughout Potter's long life, her imagination was fueled by a passion for nature, whether this was expressed in drawings of rabbits in blue coats with brass buttons, or in paintings of fungi, lovingly rendered, or in her love for the tenacious Herdwick sheep that populated the hills of the Lake District, or in her profound admiration for the traditional Lakeland lifeways of farmers and artisans. Within the larger context of environmental history that this biography provides, it is easy to see why and how Beatrix Potter became one of England's most important preservationists and greatest benefactors, leaving some 4,300 acres, including 15 farms, dozens of cottages, houses, and over 500 acres of woods to the National Trust. It was a magnificent gift, a model for gifts to come, and still, to this day, unique.
Linda Lear's biography is unique, as well, a fitting tribute to a woman whose many and varied accomplishments are just being recognized, long after her death.
Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866 to wealthy Victorian parents. From early childhood, she was passionately interested in the natural world and drew what she saw in meticulous, painstaking detail, using as models the many animals that she and her brother collected during family holidays. These animal drawings became increasingly imaginative until they at last came to life in the delightful characters that populate The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and other books, all of which became phenomenal bestsellers.
In 1905, after the death of her fiancé and editor, Norman Warne, Potter used the royalties from her books and a small inheritance from an aunt to purchase a farm in the hamlet of Near Sawrey, in the Lake District. There, she met Willie Heelis, a country lawyer who in 1913 became her husband, and together they set about fulfilling a dream they shared: preserving and protecting the Lake District from the despoliation of commercial development. They lived and worked happily together until 1943, when Beatrix Potter Heelis died.
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature is the most exhaustive and rigorous examination of Potter's life to date. Linda Lear skillfully covers the material that's been been made available by earlier biographers, Margaret Lane and Judy Taylor: the solitary childhood, the astonishing literary success, the dutiful attention to elderly parents, the retirement to marriage and rural farming life. But Lear breaks a good deal of new ground, as well, taking us deep into the experience of a gifted but very private woman with a "talent for reinventing herself." She not only tells the riveting story of a woman who seems to have led three lives, but also fully and meticulously documents her sources. Scholars will appreciate the endnotes, sources, references, and lists of primary and secondary material that Lear has provided, for it is the first time in the history of Potter scholarship that such a full and complete documentation has been made.
However, Lear never allows her responsibilities as a scholar to overshadow her fascination with the human story of Beatrix Potter. With tact, sensitivity, and a profound respect, she goes deeply within her subject to bring us a woman whose tragedies and triumphs seem very personal, compellingly immediate, and entirely real. Lear demonstrates that throughout Potter's long life, her imagination was fueled by a passion for nature, whether this was expressed in drawings of rabbits in blue coats with brass buttons, or in paintings of fungi, lovingly rendered, or in her love for the tenacious Herdwick sheep that populated the hills of the Lake District, or in her profound admiration for the traditional Lakeland lifeways of farmers and artisans. Within the larger context of environmental history that this biography provides, it is easy to see why and how Beatrix Potter became one of England's most important preservationists and greatest benefactors, leaving some 4,300 acres, including 15 farms, dozens of cottages, houses, and over 500 acres of woods to the National Trust. It was a magnificent gift, a model for gifts to come, and still, to this day, unique.
Linda Lear's biography is unique, as well, a fitting tribute to a woman whose many and varied accomplishments are just being recognized, long after her death.
July 27, 2021
I'm cheating a little by marking this book as "read" because I didn't read it all, but I did have a decent flip-through and read several sections.
But as much as I love Beatrix Potter's tales and her wonderful legacy upon this world, I'm afraid I simply cannot sit through 500+ pages of her life and background. It's a bit too long. I'm not THAT interested, although I am interested in Beatrix Potter in general.
I borrowed this book from the library online, so failed to see how thick and biographical it was. I think I thought it would be full of coloured pictures and nature inspiration and cute sketches, but alas 'tis not.
It's a huge biography on Beatrix Potter. Nothing wrong with that, but it was too dry and long for me. However, if you're doing research or writing a paper on Potter or something like that (or you happen to love long-@ss biographies), then I would definitely recommend it. Full of details, family history, influences, and it has some coloured photos.
But as much as I love Beatrix Potter's tales and her wonderful legacy upon this world, I'm afraid I simply cannot sit through 500+ pages of her life and background. It's a bit too long. I'm not THAT interested, although I am interested in Beatrix Potter in general.
I borrowed this book from the library online, so failed to see how thick and biographical it was. I think I thought it would be full of coloured pictures and nature inspiration and cute sketches, but alas 'tis not.
It's a huge biography on Beatrix Potter. Nothing wrong with that, but it was too dry and long for me. However, if you're doing research or writing a paper on Potter or something like that (or you happen to love long-@ss biographies), then I would definitely recommend it. Full of details, family history, influences, and it has some coloured photos.
May 6, 2019
Very readable and with great flow for a highly detailed and researched biography. I loved learning about this fascinating person who did much for children’s literature and nature conservation. The ending didn’t have the emotional punch I had hoped for, though it suited Beatrix Potter’s unsentimental personality well, which lowered this to 4 stars. Overall though I highly recommend for those interested in biographies of literary figures as well as Potter fans.
March 2, 2020
This book was recommended to me by the staff at Hilltop as the best biography of Beatrix Potter. At the time I was reading the Lane bio and felt somewhat loyal to it and daunted by the size of this one. Having finished it, I feel as if I really know Beatrix Potter- the things she loved, the things she knew so well, her talents and abilities. I found it especially fascinating to learn the influences on her as a girl and young woman. She was a superb artist, farmer, herds woman, naturalist, businesswoman, antique collector, decorator, as well as a loving daughter, sister, wife and aunt. I did get a bit bogged down in the National Trust details but overall thoroughly enjoyed this book.
owned-tbr
October 1, 2025I'm going to set this aside for now and restart it next spring - I was LOVING it but there are so many books I want to get to this fall and this book is a perfect spring-time read.
May 17, 2025
“Imagination is the precursor to policy, the precondition to action. Imagination, like wonder, allows us to value something. Imagination allowed Beatrix Potter to value the natural world and to share the treasures she found in the Lake District and its culture”.
I loved learning about Beatrix’s life and interests as well as the behind the scene stories of her books. We share a handful of common interests - mushrooms, children’s literature, art, and farming. When you read about someone like Beatrix it’s easy to feel quite small in comparison to all that she accomplished and what an incredible mind she had. I was inspired by her late start in farming as a born city girl turned country mouse. She lived a steady life in nature and some really wonderful things resulted.
I loved learning about Beatrix’s life and interests as well as the behind the scene stories of her books. We share a handful of common interests - mushrooms, children’s literature, art, and farming. When you read about someone like Beatrix it’s easy to feel quite small in comparison to all that she accomplished and what an incredible mind she had. I was inspired by her late start in farming as a born city girl turned country mouse. She lived a steady life in nature and some really wonderful things resulted.
February 8, 2021
I don't think I will ever look at a Peter Rabbit book in the same way after having read this. I don't normally like or read biographies much because I am always apprehensive that the author will spoil the person by giving t00 much information and coming up with a rather disagreeable portrayal of the person. I have only read Humphrey Carpenter's biography of J. R. R. Tolkien and though I enjoyed it fairly well (it is about the master after all, humph🧐) I still believe you'll get a clearer picture of the man by reading his books, reading his letters, and listening to the Amon Sul Podcast❤, but particularly his letters. In this biography Linda Lear presents Beatrix Potter in a very matter-of-fact way, very much like B.P. would have talked about herself, no sentimentalism or unnecessary embellishments, only reality as it was experienced. We do get to hear the author's opinion but not in an obstructive way, it is rather like a bit of writing in the margin of a book referring to a certain scene or paragraph that we would do. Extracts from a multitude of letters, extensive research, facts, numbers, histories accompany the author's own comments which gives such authenticity to the work, I honestly felt, for a few weeks, to have had daily conversations with Beatrix Potter. Wonderful feeling for I love the lady! I lived, drawn, cried, suffered, laughed, marveled alongside this extraordinary lady, "a many-sided genius" as she had been called, an extremely talented artist, writer, pioneering scientific researcher and illustrator, a landowner who conserved acres of Lakeland countryside, a true woman who knew the worth of good sheep and cattle🥰, wife, friend. A rich life, a life in nature, a life of work, perseverance, creative genius, struggles, joys, endeavors, success, a full life. A re-read for sure!
"I would rather keep going till I drop - early or late - never mind what the work is, so long as it is useful and well done" H.B.P.
"I would rather keep going till I drop - early or late - never mind what the work is, so long as it is useful and well done" H.B.P.
August 18, 2020
What a wonderful biography of Miss Potter! I learned much and thoroughly enjoyed my time in this book. I’m so grateful my parents got this one for me for Christmas a year or so ago.
One line particularly stood out to me (though there were many, many great ones):
“Beatrix never lost her critical independence, liking some of his paintings while rejecting others.”
This, to me, is the same as liking some of an author’s books while disliking others for whatever reason. It’s the viewer’s or reader’s prerogative to enjoy or not the paintings and books and films they take in for entertainment purposes. I have found many books and movies and pieces of art to enjoy, and I’ve bumped into plenty that weren’t a good match for my personal taste. My friends have had similar experiences. In this way, we are all very similar to Miss Potter. What a delightful thought!
One line particularly stood out to me (though there were many, many great ones):
“Beatrix never lost her critical independence, liking some of his paintings while rejecting others.”
This, to me, is the same as liking some of an author’s books while disliking others for whatever reason. It’s the viewer’s or reader’s prerogative to enjoy or not the paintings and books and films they take in for entertainment purposes. I have found many books and movies and pieces of art to enjoy, and I’ve bumped into plenty that weren’t a good match for my personal taste. My friends have had similar experiences. In this way, we are all very similar to Miss Potter. What a delightful thought!
March 3, 2024
At the beginning of this book I wasn't sure I was going to like it. SO many facts, lots and lots of details, but as the book progressed, it became much more narrative and enjoyable. She was such a fascinating woman. I've always loved her books and now I love them even more. I'm looking forward to re-reading them with new insight and understanding to both her personal life and work as an author and illustrator.
January 4, 2017
Don't be fooled by Beatrix Potter's charming drawings -- this was a tough, unsentimental woman who loved the nitty-gritty, dirty work of farming and animal-breeding, negotiated with the best to create vast swathes of land for Britain's National Trust, and managed her own merchandising better than any publisher. I read this book slowly, savoring the details of her scientific explorations (fungi, animals), her scrupulous editing of her wee picture books, her marriage, and her friendships. (One, with American children's librarian Anne Carrol Moore, especially delighted me - I wrote about her for one of my favorite papers in graduate school.) Highly recommended!
May 26, 2024
Here is a lovely book telling the reader about the life of well known author Beatrix Potter.
https://hubpages.com/@ladydazy
https://hubpages.com/@ladydazy
September 25, 2012
What did children do before Disney? They read Beatrix Potter. They still do. Her Peter Rabbit, who first appeared in 1902, still has a world audience, and royalties from her other books and "licensing kingdom" (as Linda Lear's publisher puts it) earn something like $500 million a year. The new film about Potter's life, starring Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, will make that gross even more.
Unlike Disney's Mickey Mouse & Co., Potter's Peter & Co. were set in "a real place and in real, rather than imagined, nature," observes Ms. Lear in her new biography "Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature" (St. Martin's Press, 554 pages, $30). This meant, for example, that Potter (an exquisite illustrator) dressed her rabbits in human clothes but pictured them in postures and positions these creatures habitually assume. My favorite illustration is of two rabbits in a potting shed. One is entering the building with a tray of flowers as another tends to a flowerpot. This pen-and-ink study vividly creates a gardening world, "replete with pelargoniums and fuchsias in claypots, with a collection of gardening tools — rakes, hoes, brooms, spades, forks and a large watering can."
Potter outdoes Disney and other animated cartoonists in her romance of details at the intersection of the animal and human worlds. From childhood on, Potter lived with animals, making pets of mice and rabbits and all sorts of wild things.
Potter did not become a children's book author until she was nearly 40. But her long apprenticeship as an observer and illustrator of the natural world served her well. She was an amateur scientist who put nature under her microscope and a conservationist who left a tract of land several times larger than New York City's Central Park.
Born in 1866, Potter belonged to a socially ambitious and wealthy family that expected their daughter to marry upward. When she fell in love with her editor, the family rejected his proposal of marriage, since anyone in publishing was considered no better than "in trade." Potter thought her parents' pretensions were ridiculous, since the family fortune had been built on the cotton trade. But there is no snobbery quite like that of the nouveau riche, which places a premium on social climbing.
But what of Potter before 40? Did she have no beaus? Ms. Lear takes her time explaining that Potter was shy and disliked the elaborateness of Victorian courting rituals. And by the 1890s she was too old to behave like one of those "new women" that H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw had so much fun writing about.
Potter was quite willing to defy her parents when the right man came along, but her editor died a month after the announcement of their engagement. A devastated yet resilient Potter eventually found love again when she married her solicitor, another suitor whom her parents had rejected.
Potter's attitude toward her family and marriage reminds me of Charlottes Brontë's. Both women wanted to be good daughters, but they had the independence of mind to seek happiness outside the patriarchal home when it was offered to them. Potter was fortunate in that her only two suitors were sensitive to her genius, and in that other men, too, did their best to promote her talent within the strictures of Victorian society.
In Ms. Lear's account Potter emerges as a determined woman, yet one who was in no hurry to develop her talent, which began with copying pictures she liked, studying the anatomy of animals, and then adapting her knowledge to "picture-letters" she sent to children.
The photographs, drawings, and watercolors in this biography require considerable study. There is a portrait, for example, of a sheep's head that is done with such gravity and care that it rivals any presidential portrait I've seen. "Her skill impressed her shepherds," Ms. Lear notes.
Compare the photograph of a beaming Potter holding her Pekinese dogs, Tzusee and Chuleh, to one of her parents adopting dour poses for the camera. That the ebullient Potter could have emerged out of that rigid world to live on in such triumphant old age is surely a great achievement, one this biography superbly commemorates.
Ms. Lear's ability to meld narrative and analysis is very impressive — so much so that whether you know much or little of Beatrix Potter, you will be enchanted by this story of a supremely gifted and ultimately happy human being. Potter's story has been told before, of course, and Ms. Lear gives due credit to her predecessors. But this book's level of detail and acuity makes it as nearly definitive as biography can be.
Unlike Disney's Mickey Mouse & Co., Potter's Peter & Co. were set in "a real place and in real, rather than imagined, nature," observes Ms. Lear in her new biography "Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature" (St. Martin's Press, 554 pages, $30). This meant, for example, that Potter (an exquisite illustrator) dressed her rabbits in human clothes but pictured them in postures and positions these creatures habitually assume. My favorite illustration is of two rabbits in a potting shed. One is entering the building with a tray of flowers as another tends to a flowerpot. This pen-and-ink study vividly creates a gardening world, "replete with pelargoniums and fuchsias in claypots, with a collection of gardening tools — rakes, hoes, brooms, spades, forks and a large watering can."
Potter outdoes Disney and other animated cartoonists in her romance of details at the intersection of the animal and human worlds. From childhood on, Potter lived with animals, making pets of mice and rabbits and all sorts of wild things.
Potter did not become a children's book author until she was nearly 40. But her long apprenticeship as an observer and illustrator of the natural world served her well. She was an amateur scientist who put nature under her microscope and a conservationist who left a tract of land several times larger than New York City's Central Park.
Born in 1866, Potter belonged to a socially ambitious and wealthy family that expected their daughter to marry upward. When she fell in love with her editor, the family rejected his proposal of marriage, since anyone in publishing was considered no better than "in trade." Potter thought her parents' pretensions were ridiculous, since the family fortune had been built on the cotton trade. But there is no snobbery quite like that of the nouveau riche, which places a premium on social climbing.
But what of Potter before 40? Did she have no beaus? Ms. Lear takes her time explaining that Potter was shy and disliked the elaborateness of Victorian courting rituals. And by the 1890s she was too old to behave like one of those "new women" that H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw had so much fun writing about.
Potter was quite willing to defy her parents when the right man came along, but her editor died a month after the announcement of their engagement. A devastated yet resilient Potter eventually found love again when she married her solicitor, another suitor whom her parents had rejected.
Potter's attitude toward her family and marriage reminds me of Charlottes Brontë's. Both women wanted to be good daughters, but they had the independence of mind to seek happiness outside the patriarchal home when it was offered to them. Potter was fortunate in that her only two suitors were sensitive to her genius, and in that other men, too, did their best to promote her talent within the strictures of Victorian society.
In Ms. Lear's account Potter emerges as a determined woman, yet one who was in no hurry to develop her talent, which began with copying pictures she liked, studying the anatomy of animals, and then adapting her knowledge to "picture-letters" she sent to children.
The photographs, drawings, and watercolors in this biography require considerable study. There is a portrait, for example, of a sheep's head that is done with such gravity and care that it rivals any presidential portrait I've seen. "Her skill impressed her shepherds," Ms. Lear notes.
Compare the photograph of a beaming Potter holding her Pekinese dogs, Tzusee and Chuleh, to one of her parents adopting dour poses for the camera. That the ebullient Potter could have emerged out of that rigid world to live on in such triumphant old age is surely a great achievement, one this biography superbly commemorates.
Ms. Lear's ability to meld narrative and analysis is very impressive — so much so that whether you know much or little of Beatrix Potter, you will be enchanted by this story of a supremely gifted and ultimately happy human being. Potter's story has been told before, of course, and Ms. Lear gives due credit to her predecessors. But this book's level of detail and acuity makes it as nearly definitive as biography can be.
January 21, 2008
Linda Lear's biography of Helen Beatrix Potter reveals the life of a woman whose passions, pursuits, and legacies extend far beyond the tidy realm of her fame as an author and illustrator of children's books. Potter was also a talented landscape painter and an award-winning sheep breeder. She was an accomplished amateur mycologist; she is thought to be the first person to successfully reproduce fungi from spores. Her scientific drawings of fungi and insects are so accurate, they're still referenced today in texts on those subjects. An early champion of nature conservation and the preservation of fell farms, she accumulated significant property holdings in England's Lake District and bequeathed them to the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty.
I enjoyed learning about the real pets and people and places behind the charming tales of critters like Peter Rabbit and Jeremy Fisher. I had to laugh when I read that she settled a dispute with her publisher about the color she'd used in an illustration of Jeremy by bringing the frog to the publisher's office. I was also intrigued to learn that when the various Potter pets (mice, snakes, lizards, rabbits, hedgehogs, to name a few) died, they weren't buried; some were stuffed, but most were boiled, and their skeletons were then cleaned, measured, and displayed in the children's nursery!
While Potter's character shines through as fascinating, I wasn't satisfied with Lear's narrative. As a biographer, she took no liberties of speculation and expressed few opinions of her own. The book has about 300 pages of text and 100 pages of end notes, which made it heavy reading--both in the academic sense and in the physical sense. (I hated lugging that thing around with me!)
I also found the structure of the book irritating. It's roughly chronological, but Lear attempted to chronicle Potter's life in terms of milestones, naming chapters after them: Roots, Exposures, Transitions, Experiments, etc. Real life, however, doesn't follow such contrived chapters, so there's quite a bit of overlap--and hence redundancy--among the chapters of the book.
I enjoyed learning about the real pets and people and places behind the charming tales of critters like Peter Rabbit and Jeremy Fisher. I had to laugh when I read that she settled a dispute with her publisher about the color she'd used in an illustration of Jeremy by bringing the frog to the publisher's office. I was also intrigued to learn that when the various Potter pets (mice, snakes, lizards, rabbits, hedgehogs, to name a few) died, they weren't buried; some were stuffed, but most were boiled, and their skeletons were then cleaned, measured, and displayed in the children's nursery!
While Potter's character shines through as fascinating, I wasn't satisfied with Lear's narrative. As a biographer, she took no liberties of speculation and expressed few opinions of her own. The book has about 300 pages of text and 100 pages of end notes, which made it heavy reading--both in the academic sense and in the physical sense. (I hated lugging that thing around with me!)
I also found the structure of the book irritating. It's roughly chronological, but Lear attempted to chronicle Potter's life in terms of milestones, naming chapters after them: Roots, Exposures, Transitions, Experiments, etc. Real life, however, doesn't follow such contrived chapters, so there's quite a bit of overlap--and hence redundancy--among the chapters of the book.
October 18, 2016
This is a HUGE book so I've been reading it for over a month on my lunch breaks and it's incredibly interesting. I've never been a fan of Beatrix Potter's stories, I'm not a huge animal lover and I don't really like books with animals as main characters which is like EVERY ONE OF HER CHILDREN'S BOOKS. But I picked this up on a whim because I liked the cover and wow, I was sucked into it. Beatrix Potter's life is really incredible, interesting and worth the read. I say that with it being over 500 pages. This memoir is worth the read. Completely.
August 4, 2022
This was my first biography, so I cannot compare it to others, but I have the feeling any future biography I will read will have quite something to live up to.
This was an amazing book, and such an amazing woman! I only knew that she had written and illustrated childrens' books and that she had something to do with sheeps and land conservation in the Lake District and was pleasantly surprised to find that she was also a natural scientist with a love for fungi. This biography paints the picture of a most extraordinary woman with many interests and occupations, constantly reinventing herself, but being guided by her deep love and understanding of nature and land.
This was an amazing book, and such an amazing woman! I only knew that she had written and illustrated childrens' books and that she had something to do with sheeps and land conservation in the Lake District and was pleasantly surprised to find that she was also a natural scientist with a love for fungi. This biography paints the picture of a most extraordinary woman with many interests and occupations, constantly reinventing herself, but being guided by her deep love and understanding of nature and land.
April 14, 2025
A thorough and intriguing biography showing the relationship between all the threads in the life of a woman best known for *The Tale of Peter Rabbit* -- against a backdrop of late-Victorian England and two world wars.
Beatrix Potter comes across as a multitalented, sometimes ornery, independent spirit, constrained in youth by gender prejudice and her own quest for new experiences from going farther with cutting-edge research and illustration of mushrooms and fungi. (One hundred years after she proposed a way that certain spores propagated, her originally poo-poo-ed observations were proved correct.)
The stuffy "nonconformist" (Unitarian) household Potter grew up in kept her fairly lonely but not unhappy, as she explored nature and, encouraged by her father, drew everything in sight, including a remarkable menagerie of pets that went well beyond rabbits and hedgehogs to all sort of amphibians and bugs -- and was allowed to go everywhere with her on family vacations.
Potter's own ambition and pragmatism engendered a long relationship with Frederick Warne publishers, but the books sprang initially from the delight she took in writing fanciful letters with pictures to young friends, notably the children of a former governess.
As much as I loved the pictures, I have always felt most of the stories are too violent for young children, but the biography helped me understand that they spring from an unsentimental and realistic observation of nature, red in tooth and claw. And generations of children worldwide have not had my reservations.
When Potter's growing financial independence let her indulge her love of the countryside -- and farming took over her energies -- she began to buy land in the Lake District. The books then took a back seat, although new friendships with American admirers led to a few more publications, primarily in the *Horn Book* magazine.
At her death, 4,300 acres of fells farmland were added to her previous gifts of land to the National Trust, which then tried rather unsuccessfully to preserve the fells-farming way of life and the rugged Herdwick sheep Potter adored according to her instructions.
Author Linda Lear, who also has a biography of Rachel Carson under her belt, draws on Potter's extensive correspondence, and even her youthful diaries, written in code.
Children the world over cherished her, but Potter had no children of her own. Her first love died young. Her late-in-life marriage to Lakelands lawyer William Heelis was s strong and loving partnership. And she cultivated contact with children her whole life, including with generations of Girl Guides who camped on her land.
Beatrix Potter comes across as a multitalented, sometimes ornery, independent spirit, constrained in youth by gender prejudice and her own quest for new experiences from going farther with cutting-edge research and illustration of mushrooms and fungi. (One hundred years after she proposed a way that certain spores propagated, her originally poo-poo-ed observations were proved correct.)
The stuffy "nonconformist" (Unitarian) household Potter grew up in kept her fairly lonely but not unhappy, as she explored nature and, encouraged by her father, drew everything in sight, including a remarkable menagerie of pets that went well beyond rabbits and hedgehogs to all sort of amphibians and bugs -- and was allowed to go everywhere with her on family vacations.
Potter's own ambition and pragmatism engendered a long relationship with Frederick Warne publishers, but the books sprang initially from the delight she took in writing fanciful letters with pictures to young friends, notably the children of a former governess.
As much as I loved the pictures, I have always felt most of the stories are too violent for young children, but the biography helped me understand that they spring from an unsentimental and realistic observation of nature, red in tooth and claw. And generations of children worldwide have not had my reservations.
When Potter's growing financial independence let her indulge her love of the countryside -- and farming took over her energies -- she began to buy land in the Lake District. The books then took a back seat, although new friendships with American admirers led to a few more publications, primarily in the *Horn Book* magazine.
At her death, 4,300 acres of fells farmland were added to her previous gifts of land to the National Trust, which then tried rather unsuccessfully to preserve the fells-farming way of life and the rugged Herdwick sheep Potter adored according to her instructions.
Author Linda Lear, who also has a biography of Rachel Carson under her belt, draws on Potter's extensive correspondence, and even her youthful diaries, written in code.
Children the world over cherished her, but Potter had no children of her own. Her first love died young. Her late-in-life marriage to Lakelands lawyer William Heelis was s strong and loving partnership. And she cultivated contact with children her whole life, including with generations of Girl Guides who camped on her land.
July 31, 2016
From BBC radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Lindsay Duncan reads from a Linda Lear's biography of the 20th century's most beloved children's writer and creator of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter.
1/5: This opening episode reveal Potter's north country ancestry and the landscapes that nurtured her creative imagination.
2/5: Linda Lear's biography of the author reveals how Peter Rabbit and Jeremy Fisher came to be born.
3/5. Potter's initial success as a writer was paralleled by an increasingly close relationship with her publisher Norman Warne.
4/5. When she reached middle age, Potter immersed herself in the Cumbrian landscape and the routines of farming life.
5/5. At the end of a long life, Beatrix Potter had become a major landowner, a successful north country farmer and significant benefactor to the National Trust.
Abridged by Alison Joseph
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2006.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007726w
Lindsay Duncan reads from a Linda Lear's biography of the 20th century's most beloved children's writer and creator of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter.
1/5: This opening episode reveal Potter's north country ancestry and the landscapes that nurtured her creative imagination.
2/5: Linda Lear's biography of the author reveals how Peter Rabbit and Jeremy Fisher came to be born.
3/5. Potter's initial success as a writer was paralleled by an increasingly close relationship with her publisher Norman Warne.
4/5. When she reached middle age, Potter immersed herself in the Cumbrian landscape and the routines of farming life.
5/5. At the end of a long life, Beatrix Potter had become a major landowner, a successful north country farmer and significant benefactor to the National Trust.
Abridged by Alison Joseph
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2006.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007726w
May 18, 2018
It was difficult to get into this book, (started in April, read a little and put the book down and picked it back up in May)and it’s a very long read (took me about 3 weeks to read, reading every day). It’s beautifully written and eventually I did get into it more. In the end, while I’m glad I’m done reading it, I am also glad that I did read it. I truly enjoyed the story of Beatrix Potter’s life and how her stories and books came to be. I wish I had more of her artistic and creative abilities.
March 6, 2014
Not for me at this time.
(clickerty)
Read by Lindsay Duncan.
Broadcast on:
BBC Radio 7, 3:00pm Monday 16th August 2010
Duration:
15 minutes
Available until:
3:17pm Monday 23rd August 2010
Categories:
Drama, Biographical
(clickerty)Read by Lindsay Duncan.
Broadcast on:
BBC Radio 7, 3:00pm Monday 16th August 2010
Duration:
15 minutes
Available until:
3:17pm Monday 23rd August 2010
Categories:
Drama, Biographical
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 24, 2017
Fascinating and highly detailed account of the life of Beatrix Potter.
August 17, 2018
Beatrix Potter came of age in England during the Victorian era, born to a newly rich, leisure class London-based family. She was a socially shy and awkward child with overly controlling parents but had artistic talent, a keen sense of imagination, and great powers of observation. During yearly summer-long visits to the country she developed a love of nature that lasted throughout her life.
Like most young women of her status, she was educated at home where she studied art and drawing among other things. The Victorian craze for natural history manifested itself in Beatrix as a passion for fungi and fossils. Although discouraged as an “amateur” at a time when science was a jealously guarded professional brotherhood, her curious and brilliant mind led to a complete immersion into a study of lichens and fungi such that her portfolio of watercolor fungi is used to this day for identification purposes by mycologists.
Always sketching and storytelling, Potter’s first stories appeared as picture letters to the children of friends and family. Children’s literature was becoming popular and lucrative for publishers. When Warne Publishers agreed to publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit, it was received with a level of success that neither party could have predicted and marked the beginning of Potter’s fame, financial success and independence finally from her parents.
After the death of her fiance and publisher, Norman Warne, Potter began a new life as the owner of Hill Top Farm in the Lake District where she became known as a successful farmer and sheep breeder. She eventually married William Heelis and together they began in earnest to work toward the preservation of the natural beauty and the farming culture of the Lake District, leaving over 3000 acres of unspoiled land to the National Trust upon their deaths. Potter was a women ahead of her time who left her mark both in children’s literature and in awakening an interest in environmentalism and protecting natural landscapes.
I became interested in finding out more about Beatrix Potter after visiting England’s Lake District and getting a glimpse of her far reaching impact on the area beyond her delightfully illustrated children’s books. It’s difficult to imagine a more thorough treatment of her life than this excellent biography. It is gently told with meticulous detail - perhaps not a book to read straight through, but to savor a few chapters at a time.
Like most young women of her status, she was educated at home where she studied art and drawing among other things. The Victorian craze for natural history manifested itself in Beatrix as a passion for fungi and fossils. Although discouraged as an “amateur” at a time when science was a jealously guarded professional brotherhood, her curious and brilliant mind led to a complete immersion into a study of lichens and fungi such that her portfolio of watercolor fungi is used to this day for identification purposes by mycologists.
Always sketching and storytelling, Potter’s first stories appeared as picture letters to the children of friends and family. Children’s literature was becoming popular and lucrative for publishers. When Warne Publishers agreed to publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit, it was received with a level of success that neither party could have predicted and marked the beginning of Potter’s fame, financial success and independence finally from her parents.
After the death of her fiance and publisher, Norman Warne, Potter began a new life as the owner of Hill Top Farm in the Lake District where she became known as a successful farmer and sheep breeder. She eventually married William Heelis and together they began in earnest to work toward the preservation of the natural beauty and the farming culture of the Lake District, leaving over 3000 acres of unspoiled land to the National Trust upon their deaths. Potter was a women ahead of her time who left her mark both in children’s literature and in awakening an interest in environmentalism and protecting natural landscapes.
I became interested in finding out more about Beatrix Potter after visiting England’s Lake District and getting a glimpse of her far reaching impact on the area beyond her delightfully illustrated children’s books. It’s difficult to imagine a more thorough treatment of her life than this excellent biography. It is gently told with meticulous detail - perhaps not a book to read straight through, but to savor a few chapters at a time.
August 23, 2019
I suppose nearly everyone in the English-speaking world would be able to identify Beatrix Potter as the author/illustrator of the Peter Rabbit books. But, as this book shows, Ms. Potter’s life consisted of much more than that.
When I started planning our first trip to England, I knew that Ms. Potter’s Hill Top Farm was one of the places I wanted to visit. It is definitely off the beaten path, but well worth the drive, and the countryside around the Lakes is stunning. Ms. Potter herself selected and arranged the furnishings and memorabilia at Hill Top, and the National Trust has maintained it as she wished.
Ms. Potter was an amazing woman for any era, and particularly so for her own time period. Highly recommended!
When I started planning our first trip to England, I knew that Ms. Potter’s Hill Top Farm was one of the places I wanted to visit. It is definitely off the beaten path, but well worth the drive, and the countryside around the Lakes is stunning. Ms. Potter herself selected and arranged the furnishings and memorabilia at Hill Top, and the National Trust has maintained it as she wished.
Ms. Potter was an amazing woman for any era, and particularly so for her own time period. Highly recommended!
January 13, 2024
Beatrix Potter's house, which I had the happiness of visiting in 2014, is hands-down the best historic site I've ever visited; and this biography, appropriately, is hands-down the best biography I've ever read.
Linda Lear does an amazingly, almost miraculously skillful job turning the factual record into a well-told page-turner. She never seems to overstep her bounds as biographer or to present as fact something that is only speculation, but she interprets, fills in the gaps, and strings incidents together into engaging, readable narrative. It offers all the heft of respectable scholarship, and at the same time all the excitement and entertainment of fiction. Biography at its finest!
Linda Lear does an amazingly, almost miraculously skillful job turning the factual record into a well-told page-turner. She never seems to overstep her bounds as biographer or to present as fact something that is only speculation, but she interprets, fills in the gaps, and strings incidents together into engaging, readable narrative. It offers all the heft of respectable scholarship, and at the same time all the excitement and entertainment of fiction. Biography at its finest!
December 30, 2025
This book gives an absolutely fascinating insight into the life of Beatrix Potter, but I learnt so much not just about her but also about the Lake District, fell farming, the National Trust, fungi....I could go on and on!!! There's so much more to Beatrix Potter than just Peter Rabbit! Well worth a read.
July 16, 2023
This is a well-researched, comprehensive overview of the life of Beatrix Potter, with special emphasis on her love of nature and the English countryside. There are four sections of photographs and color reproductions of her artwork, which help to add depth and significance to the narrative.
January 6, 2010
Linda Lear's story about Beatrix Potter opens up a world so very far beyond the image of a Victorian author dabbling in children's books. Ms Potter was a self-taught naturalist who also happened to write stories and poetry for children. If you stop and really look at her illustrations, you understand how intimately she knew each animal she drew.
The first part of the book heavily concentrates on Beatrix's studies of fungi and her struggle to have her research accepted by the Natural History Museum’s “experts”. It is painfully obvious that she is being treated like a silly woman who doesn’t really understand things like germination of spores and symbiotic relations, even though she was better informed than they. Beatrix will run into this chauvinism throughout her life but has the mettle to persevere until she succeeds. In 1942 when the antibiotic properties of penicillin were being investigated as having curative possibilities, Potter wrote in her notebook of how she and her mentor, the naturalist Charles McIntosh, had speculated about the application of a number of fungi in the same manner.
Her relation with Publisher Norman Warne brings her books and illustrations to publication; but more importantly, it gives her the financial independence which she seeks. It’s not that she feels a burden to her parents, I think quite the opposite. They are, in fact, dependent on her to keep the house and staff running smoothly as well as arranging the moves to the properties which her father leases each summer in the Lake District. Thus her mother resists Beatrix’s desire to marry Norman, judging him most unsuitable as a man in trade. She carries on, making up stories and poems and drawing the nature surrounding her. Her picture letters to the children of her former nanny form the basis for Peter Rabbit as well as Benjamin Bunny. The sketchbooks from a lifetime in the country provide the background to her stories, from Farmer McGregor’s remarkable resemblance to Charles McIntosh to the pictures of fabrics she copied from the Victoria & Albert and used in The Tailor of Gloucester.
As Beatrix gains financially she buys Hill Top Farm near where the family spent their summers. The author’s descriptions of the Lake District and Beatrix working to preserve the area through the National Trust make you yearn to jump on the next plane so you can walk the fells, visit Near Sawry and see for yourself Hill Top Farm and Castle Cottage knowing that they’re still exactly as they were in the first half of the 20th century. She was so firm in her intention to maintain the character of the district, she refused to have electricity put into Hill Top Farm. Her writing and painting seem to have become secondary to the maintenance of her fell farms, breeding of Herdwicke Sheep & the preservation of the Lake District. She used her royalties plus the not inconsiderable inheritances from her family to enlarge her holdings. All of her properties were left to the National Trust & are all now contained in the Lake District National Park, just waiting for us to visit.
Even with her devotion to the character of the Lake District, Beatrix will always be best known for her stories and her wonderful paintings. The royalties & copyrights were bequeathed to Frederick Warne upon her husband’s death. Warne Publishing has issued Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales. It is a welcome companion to Linda Lear’s book which suffers only because there is not room for all the illustrations. No need to have a grandchild in hand to enjoy these tales with their very personal illustrations. They are for all of us.
The first part of the book heavily concentrates on Beatrix's studies of fungi and her struggle to have her research accepted by the Natural History Museum’s “experts”. It is painfully obvious that she is being treated like a silly woman who doesn’t really understand things like germination of spores and symbiotic relations, even though she was better informed than they. Beatrix will run into this chauvinism throughout her life but has the mettle to persevere until she succeeds. In 1942 when the antibiotic properties of penicillin were being investigated as having curative possibilities, Potter wrote in her notebook of how she and her mentor, the naturalist Charles McIntosh, had speculated about the application of a number of fungi in the same manner.
Her relation with Publisher Norman Warne brings her books and illustrations to publication; but more importantly, it gives her the financial independence which she seeks. It’s not that she feels a burden to her parents, I think quite the opposite. They are, in fact, dependent on her to keep the house and staff running smoothly as well as arranging the moves to the properties which her father leases each summer in the Lake District. Thus her mother resists Beatrix’s desire to marry Norman, judging him most unsuitable as a man in trade. She carries on, making up stories and poems and drawing the nature surrounding her. Her picture letters to the children of her former nanny form the basis for Peter Rabbit as well as Benjamin Bunny. The sketchbooks from a lifetime in the country provide the background to her stories, from Farmer McGregor’s remarkable resemblance to Charles McIntosh to the pictures of fabrics she copied from the Victoria & Albert and used in The Tailor of Gloucester.
As Beatrix gains financially she buys Hill Top Farm near where the family spent their summers. The author’s descriptions of the Lake District and Beatrix working to preserve the area through the National Trust make you yearn to jump on the next plane so you can walk the fells, visit Near Sawry and see for yourself Hill Top Farm and Castle Cottage knowing that they’re still exactly as they were in the first half of the 20th century. She was so firm in her intention to maintain the character of the district, she refused to have electricity put into Hill Top Farm. Her writing and painting seem to have become secondary to the maintenance of her fell farms, breeding of Herdwicke Sheep & the preservation of the Lake District. She used her royalties plus the not inconsiderable inheritances from her family to enlarge her holdings. All of her properties were left to the National Trust & are all now contained in the Lake District National Park, just waiting for us to visit.
Even with her devotion to the character of the Lake District, Beatrix will always be best known for her stories and her wonderful paintings. The royalties & copyrights were bequeathed to Frederick Warne upon her husband’s death. Warne Publishing has issued Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales. It is a welcome companion to Linda Lear’s book which suffers only because there is not room for all the illustrations. No need to have a grandchild in hand to enjoy these tales with their very personal illustrations. They are for all of us.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 342 reviews