Beatrix Potter

Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.

Born into a privileged Unitarian family, Potter, along with her younger brother, Walter Bertram (1872–1918), grew up with few friends outside her large extended family. Her parents were artistic, interested in nature and enjoyed the countryside. As children, Beatrix and Bertam had numerous small animals as pets which they observed closely and drew endlessly. Summer holidays were spent in Scotland and in the English Lake District where Beatrix developed a love of the natural world which was the subject of her painting from an early age.

She was educated by private governesses until she was eighteen. Her study of languages, literature, science and history was broad and she was an eager student. Her artistic talents were recognized early. Although she was provided with private art lessons, Beatrix preferred to develop her own style, particularly favoring watercolor. Along with her drawings of her animals, real and imagined, Potter illustrated insects, fossils, archeological artifacts, and fungi. In the 1890s her mycological illustrations and research on the reproduction of fungi spores generated interest from the scientific establishment. Following some success illustrating cards and booklets, Potter wrote and illustrated The Tale of Peter Rabbit publishing it first privately in 1901, and a year later as a small, three-color illustrated book with Frederick Warne & Co. She became unofficially engaged to her editor Norman Warne in 1905 despite the disapproval of her parents, but he died suddenly a month later.

With the proceeds from the books and a legacy from an aunt, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey, a tiny village in the English Lake District near Ambleside in 1905. Over the next several decades, she purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape. In 1913, at the age of 47, she married William Heelis, a respected local solicitor from Hawkshead. Potter was also a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation. She continued to write, illustrate and design spin-off merchandise based on her children’s books for Warne until the duties of land management and diminishing eyesight made it difficult to continue. Beatrix Potter published over twenty-three books; the best known are those written between 1902 and 1922. Potter died on 22 December 1943 at her home in Near Sawrey at age 77, leaving almost all her property to the National Trust. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now comprises the Lake District National Park.

Potter’s books continue to sell throughout the world, in multiple languages. Her stories have been retold in song, film, ballet and animation.

Early life


Potter’s family on both sides was from the Manchester area. They were English Unitarians, a Dissenting Protestant sect who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and were socially and politically discriminated against. Potter’s paternal grandfather, Edmund Potter, from Glossop in Derbyshire, owned the largest calico printing works in England at the time, and later served as a Member of Parliament. Beatrix’s father, Rupert William Potter (1832–1914), was educated in Manchester and trained as a barrister in London. He married Helen Leech (1839–1932), the daughter of another wealthy cotton merchant and shipbuilder from Stalybridge, at Gee Cross on 8 August 1863. Rupert practiced law, specializing in equity law and conveyancing. They lived comfortably at No. 2 Bolton Gardens, South Kensington, where Helen Beatrix was born on 28 July 1866 and her brother Walter Bertram on 14 March 1872. Both parents were artistically talented, and Rupert was an adept amateur photographer. Rupert had invested in the stock market and by the early 1890s was extremely wealthy.

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

In their school room Beatrix and Bertram kept a variety of small pets, mice, rabbits, a hedgehog, some bats, along with collections of butterflies and other insects which they drew and studied. There is no evidence to support claims that any of these creatures were mistreated, or that the motive for their study was anything more sinister than natural curiosity and a desire to draw from life. Quite the contrary, Beatrix was devoted to the care of her small animals, often taking them with her on long holidays.

For most of the first fifteen years of her life, Beatrix spent summer holidays at Dalguise, an estate in Scotland in Perthshire on the River Tay. There she sketched and explored an area that nourished her imagination and her observation. Beatrix and her brother were allowed great freedoms in the country and both children became adept students of natural history. In 1887, when Dalguise was no longer available, the Potters took their first summer holiday in Lancashire in the English Lake District, at Wray Castle near Windermere. As a result, Beatrix came to meet Hardwicke Rawnsley, incumbent vicar at Wray and later the founding secretary of the National Trust, whose interest in the countryside and country life inspired the same in Beatrix and who was to have a lasting impact on her life.

About age 14 Beatrix, like many girls at the time, began to keep a diary. Beatrix's was written in a code of her own devising which was a simple letter for letter substitution. Her Journal was an important laboratory for her creativity serving as both sketchbook and literary experiment where in tiny handwriting she reported on society, recorded her impressions of art and artists, recounted stories, and observed life around her. The Journal, decoded and transcribed by Leslie Linder in 1958, does not provide an intimate record of her personal life, but it is an invaluable source for understanding a vibrant part of British society in the late 19th century. It describes Potter’s maturing artistic and intellectual interests, her often amusing insights on the places she visited, and her unusual ability to observe nature and to describe it. Begun in 1881, her Journal ends in 1897 when her artistic and intellectual energies were absorbed in scientific study and in efforts to publish her drawings. Precocious but reserved and often bored, she was searching for more independent activities and a desire to earn some money of her own whilst dutifully taking care of her parents, dealing with her especially demanding mother, and managing their various households.

Scientific illustrations and work in mycology
Beatrix Potter’s parents did not discourage higher education. As was common in the Victorian Era, women of her class were privately educated and rarely sent to college.

Beatrix Potter was interested in every branch of natural science save astronomy. Botany was a passion for most Victorians and nature study was a popular enthusiasm. Potter was eclectic in her tastes; collecting fossils, studying archeological artifacts from London excavations, and interested in entomology. In all of these areas she drew and painted her specimens with increasing skill. By the 1890s her scientific interests centered on mycology. First drawn to fungi because of their colors and evanescence in nature and her delight in painting them, her interest deepened after meeting Charles McIntosh, a revered naturalist and mycologist during a summer holiday in Perthshire in 1892. He helped improve the accuracy of her illustrations, taught her taxonomy, and supplied her with live specimens to paint during the winter. Curious as to how fungi reproduced Potter began microscopic drawings of fungi spores (the agarics) and in 1895 developed a theory of their germination. Through the aegis of her scientific uncle, Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, a chemist and vice chancellor of the University of London, she consulted with botanists at The Royal Gardens at Kew, convincing George Massee of her ability to germinate spores and her theory of hybridization. She did not believe in the theory of symbiosis proposed by Simon Schwendener, the German mycologist as previously thought, rather she proposed a more independent process of reproduction.

Rebuffed by William Thiselton-Dyer, the Director at Kew, because of her gender and her amateur status, Beatrix wrote up her conclusions and submitted a paper “On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae” to the Linnean Society in 1897. It was introduced by Massee because, as a female, Potter could not attend proceedings or read her paper. She subsequently withdrew it realizing that some of her samples were contaminated, but continued her microscopic studies for several more years. Her paper is lost and probably destroyed, and without it and her drawings, her discoveries can never be properly evaluated. Potter later gave her other mycological drawings and scientific drawings to the Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside where mycologists still refer to them to identify fungi. There is also a collection of her fungi paintings at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth, Scotland given by Charles McIntosh. In 1967 the mycologist W.P.K. Findlay included many of Potter’s beautifully accurate fungi drawings in his Wayside & Woodland Fungi, thereby fulfilling her desire to one day have her fungi drawings published in a book. In 1997 the Linnean Society issued a posthumous apology to Potter for the sexism displayed in its handling of her research.

Potter never offered a paper to the Royal Society, and she never lectured at the London School of Economics.

Artistic and literary career
Potter’s artistic and literary interests were deeply influenced by fairies, fairy tales and fantasy. She was a student of the classic fairy tales of Western Europe. As well as stories from the Old Testament, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and  Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, she grew up with Aesop’s Fables, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen,  Charles Kingsley's  The Water Babies, the folk tales and mythology of Scotland, the German Romantics, Shakespeare, and the romances of Sir Walter Scott. As a young child, before the age of eight, Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense, including the much loved The Owl and the Pussycat, and  Lewis Carroll's  Alice in Wonderland had made their impression, although she later said of Alice that she was more interested in  Tenniel's illustrations than what they were about. The Brer Rabbit stories of Joel Chandler Harris had been family favourites and she later studied his Uncle Remus stories and illustrated them. She studied book illustration from a young age and developed her own tastes, but the work of the picture book triumvirate Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott, the latter an illustrator whose work was later collected by her father, was a great influence. When she started to illustrate, she chose first the traditional rhymes and stories, “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty", “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, “Puss-in-boots,” and “Red Riding Hood.” But most often her illustrations were fantasies featuring her own pets: mice, rabbits, kittens, and guinea pigs.

In her teenage years Potter was a regular visitor to the art galleries of London, particularly enjoying the Summer and Winter Exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London. Her Journal reveals her growing sophistication as a critic as well as the influence of her father’s friend the artist Sir John Everett Millais who recognized Beatrix’s talent of observation. Although Potter was aware of art and artistic trends, her drawing and her prose style was uniquely her own.

As a way to earn a bit of money in the 1890s, Beatrix and her brother began to print Christmas cards of their own design, as well as cards for special occasions. Mice and rabbits were the most frequent subject of her fantasy paintings. In 1890 the firm of Hildesheimer and Faulkner bought several of her drawings of her rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, to illustrate verses by Frederic Weatherly titled A Happy Pair. In 1893 the same printer brought several more drawings for Weatherly’s Our Dear Relations, another book of rhymes, and the following year Potter successfully sold a series of frog illustrations and verses for Changing Pictures, a popular annual offered by the art publisher Ernest Nister. Potter was pleased by this success and determined to publish her own illustrated stories.

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

In 1901, Beatrix privately published her own edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It was drawn in black and white with a colored frontispiece. Over a year later Frederick Warne & Co. a commercial publisher agreed to publish it if she would redraw her illustrations in color. The Tale of Peter Rabbit appeared in 1902 and was an immediate success. It was followed the next year by The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester which had also first been written as picture letters to the Moore children. Working with Norman Warne as her editor, Potter published two or three little books each year for a total of twenty-three books. The last book in this format was Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes in 1922, a collection of favorite rhymes. Although The Tale of Pigling Bland was not published until 1930, it had been written much earlier. Potter continued creating her little books until after World War I when her energies were increasingly directed toward her farming, sheep-breeding, and land conservation.

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

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

In 1905, Beatrix and Norman Warne became unofficially engaged. Potters’ parents objected to the match because Warne was “in trade” and thus not socially suitable. Sadly the engagement lasted only one month when Warne died of leukemia at age thirty-seven. That same year Potter used some of her income and a bit of inheritance to buy Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in Lancashire (now Cumbria) in the English Lake District. Beatrix and Norman may have hoped that Hill Top Farm would be their holiday home, but after Norman’s death Beatrix went ahead with its purchase as she had always wanted to own that farm and live in that charming village.

Fell farming
Hill Top Farm in the village of Near Sawrey was a working farm of just over 34 acre. It comprised a seventeenth-century farmhouse, outbuildings, orchard, vegetable gardens, and enclosures. Potter asked the tenant farmer John Cannon and his family to stay on to manage the farm for her while she made physical improvements to the farmhouse and areas of the land and gardens that had been neglected. With Cannon she toured the neighboring villages and farms to learn the techniques of fell farming and of raising livestock, including pigs, cows and chickens; the following year she added sheep. Realizing she needed to protect her boundaries she sought advice from W.H. Heelis & Son, a local firm of solicitors with offices in nearby Hawkshead. With William Heelis acting for her she bought contiguous pasture, and in 1909 the 20 acre Castle Farm across the road from Hill Top Farm. Visiting Hill Top every chance she got, Potter’s books written during this period, such as The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, about the local shop in Near Sawrey and The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, a wood mouse, reflect her increasing participation in village life and her delight in country living.

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

After Rupert Potter died in 1914, Beatrix, now a wealthy woman, found Lindeth Howe, a large house in nearby Windermere where her difficult mother lived until her death in 1931 at the age of 93. Beatrix continued to write stores for Frederick Warne, but she fully participated in country life. She established a Nursing Trust for local villages, and served on various committees and councils responsible for foot-paths and other country life issues.

Sheep farming
Beatrix Potter Heelis became keenly interested the breeding and raising of Herdwick sheep, the indigenous fell sheep, soon after acquiring Hill Top Farm. In 1923 she bought a former deer park and vast sheep farm in the Troutbeck Valley called Troutbeck Park Farm, restoring its land, its thousands of Herdwick sheep, and establishing Beatrix Potter Heelis as one of the major Herdwick sheep farmers in the area. She was admired by her shepherds and farm managers for her willingness to experiment with the latest biological remedies for the common diseases of sheep, and for her employment of the best shepherds, sheep breeders, and farm managers.

By the late 1920s Beatrix and her Hill Top farm manager Tom Storey had made a name for their prize-winning Herdwick flock. As a Herdwick breeder she won many prizes at the local agricultural shows and was frequently asked to serve as a judge. In 1942 she was named President-elect of The Herdwick Sheepbreeders’ Association, the first time a woman had ever been elected to that office. She died before taking office.

Lake District conservation
Beatrix had been a disciple of the land conservation and preservation ideals of her long-time friend and mentor, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, the first secretary and founding member of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. She supported the efforts of the National Trust to preserve not just the places of extraordinary beauty, but those heads of valley and low grazing lands that would be irreparably ruined by development. She was also an authority on the traditional Lakeland crafts, period furniture and stonework. She restored and preserved the farms that she bought or managed, making sure that each farm house had in it a piece of antique Lakeland furniture. Beatrix was interested in preserving not only the Herdwick sheep, but the way of life of fell farming. In 1930 the Heelises became partners with the National Trust in buying and managing the fell farms included in the large Monk Coniston Estate. It was composed of many farms spread over a wide area of western Lancashire, including the famously beautiful Tarn Hows. Beatrix became the de facto estate manage for the Trust for seven years until the National Trust could afford to buy most of the property back from her. Her stewardship of these farms earned her wide regard, but she was not without her critics. She was notable in observing the problems of afforestation, preserving the in-take grazing lands, and husbanding the quarries and timber on these farms. All her farms were stocked with Herdwick sheep and frequently with Galloway cattle.

Later life
Beatrix continued to write stories and to draw, though mostly for her own pleasure. Her books in the late 1920s included the semi-autobiographical The Fairy Caravan, a fanciful tale set in her beloved Troutbeck fells. It was published only in the US during Potter’s lifetime, and not until 1952 in the UK. Sister Anne, Potter’s version of the story of Bluebeard was written especially for her American readers but illustrated by Katharine Sturges. A final folktale, Wag by Wall, was published posthumously by The Horn Book in 1944. Beatrix was a generous patron of the Girl Guides whose troops she allowed to make their summer encampments on her lands and whose company she enjoyed as an older woman.

Beatrix and William Heelis enjoyed a happy marriage of thirty years, continued their farming and preservation efforts throughout the hard days of the Second World War. Although they were childless, Beatrix played an important role in William’s large family, particularly enjoying her relationship with several nieces whom she helped educate and giving comfort and aid to her husband’s brothers and sisters.

Beatrix died of complications from pneumonia and heart disease on December 22, 1943 at Castle Cottage. She left nearly all her property to The National Trust, including over 4,000 acre of land, cottages, herds of Herdwick sheep and cattle and sixteen farms. Hers was the largest gift to that time to the National Trust and enabled the preservation of the lands now included in the Lake District National Park, and the continuation of fell farming. William Heelis continued his stewardship of their properties and of her literary and artistic work for the eighteen months he survived her. His estate left the remainder to the National Trust. Heelis died in August 1945.

Legacies
Beatrix left almost all the original illustrations for her books to the National Trust. The copyright to her stories and merchandise was given to her publisher Frederick Warne and Company, now a division of the Penguin Group. Hill Top Farm was opened to the public by the National Trust in 1946 and displayed her artwork there until 1985 when it was moved to William Heelis’s former law offices in Hawkshead, also owned by the National Trust as the Beatrix Potter Gallery.

Beatrix gave her folios of mycological drawings to The Armitt Library and Museum in Ambleside before her death. The Tale of Peter Rabbit is owned by Frederick Warne and Company, The Tailor of Gloucester by the Tate Gallery, and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by the British Museum.

The largest public collection of her letters and drawings is the Leslie Linder Bequest and Leslie Linder Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In the United States, the largest public collections are those in the Special Collections of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Lloyd Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University.

Themes
There are many interpretations of Potter’s literary work, the sources of her art, and interpretations of her life and times. Please see bibliography for some of the many critical evaluations of her opus of children’s literature, including Modernist interpretations of Humphrey Carpenter and Katherine Chandler. Judy Taylor, That Naughty Rabbit: Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit, rev. 2002 tells the story of the first publication and many editions. Literary criticism is included in detail in the bibliographies of various biographical works, specialized treatments and exhibit catalogues.

Potter’s country life and her farming has also been widely discussed in the work of Susan Denyer and by other authors in the publications of The National Trust. The publications of the Beatrix Potter Society are essential scholarship.

Potter’s work as a scientific illustrator and her work in mycology is highlighted in several chapters in Linda Lear, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, 2007; Beatrix Potter: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius. 2008, UK.

Adaptations and fictionalizations
In 1971 a ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter, directed by Reginald Mills was released. Set to music by John Lanchbery with choreography by Frederick Ashton and performed in character costume by members of the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera House orchestra. The ballet of the same name has been performed by other dance companies around the world.

In 1982, the BBC produced The Tale of Beatrix Potter. This dramatisation of her life was written by John Hawkesworth and directed by Bill Hayes. It starred Holly Aird and Penelope Wilton as the young and adult Beatrix respectively.

In 2006 Chris Noonan directed Miss Potter, a biopic of Potter’s life focusing on her early career and romance with her editor Norman Warne. Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor play the title roles.

2004 – 2011 Beatrix Potter is also featured in a series of light mysteries called The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter by Susan Wittig Albert. The eight books in the series starting with the Tale of Hill Top Farm (2004) deal with her life in the Lake District and the village of Near Sawrey between 1905 and 1913.

Publications
The 23 Tales
 * The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)
 * The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903)
 * The Tailor of Gloucester (1903)
 * The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904)
 * The Tale of Two Bad Mice (1904)
 * The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle (1905)
 * The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan (1905)
 * The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (1906)
 * The Story of A Fierce Bad Rabbit (1906)
 * The Story of Miss Moppet (1906)
 * The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907)
 * The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908)
 * The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or, The Roly-Poly Pudding (1908)
 * The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909)
 * The Tale of Ginger and Pickles (1909)
 * The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910)
 * The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes (1911)
 * The Tale of Mr. Tod (1912)
 * The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913)
 * Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes (1917)
 * The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse (1918)
 * Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes (1922)
 * The Tale of Little Pig Robinson (1930)

Other books
 * Peter Rabbit's Painting Book (1911)
 * Tom Kitten's Painting Book (1917)
 * Jemima Puddle-Duck's Painting Book (1925)
 * Peter Rabbit's Almanac for 1929 (1928)
 * The Fairy Caravan (1929)
 * Sister Anne (illustrated by Katharine Sturges) (1932)
 * Wag-by-Wall (decorations by J. J. Lankes) (1944)
 * The Tale of the Faithful Dove (illustrated by Marie Angel) (1955, 1970)
 * The Sly Old Cat (written 1906; first published 1971)