The Tales of Beatrix Potter

Cold winter evenings or blustery Autumn days had the soundtrack of my Mother's voice reading Beatrix Potter books out loud when I was younger. In fact, the wonderful children's books were the epitome of my childhood. The illustrations were just perfect and the stories, whilst simple, were mysterious and adventurous in their own way. Beatrix Potter was born in 1866, South Kensington, London. She was said to live a lonely life, being educated at home by a governess and so perhaps that's why she delved into a fantasy world of rabbits, geese and other traditional animals.


Beatrix's illustrations come from her copious studies of her own pets, and the animals that roamed the gardens of the places in which she holidayed as a child. The fascinating fact was that Beatrix's illustrations became greetings cards before her books were created. I see her drawings on cards in shops now and I always thought that it had developed the other way around. Her first book, Peter Rabbit, was published in 1902 and in just one years time she had sold 50,000 copies. For that era, and for a young woman, that was an incredible number and she astonished literary followers around the world.


Beatrix's characters were based in the land that she eventually bought for herself and lived on. Tom Kitten, Samual Whiskers and Roly Poly lived on the farm that she owned - Hill Top. Possibly one of the most interesting elements of Beatrix's life was that she didn't sit and write for the duration of it. In fact she became a farmer for thirty years and became an expert in breeding sheep.

Beatrix left a lasting legacy behind her when she died, not just because of the children she had entertained through her books and drawings. She left 4000 acres of land and 14 farms to the National Trust when she died in 1943, preserving the countryside that inspired her writings


Peter Rabbit became much more than just a one off book. 23 Peter Rabbit books were published and you'll likely recognize some of the titles such as The Tale of Tom Kitten, The Tale of Jeremy Fisher, The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle... The books had a quality to them that was different to the normal brightly coloured, loud children books. They were vintage, I suppose, and children across the world read them even today.