Beatrix Potter’s letter to friend’s son became basis of The Tales of Peter Rabbit
UNABLE to think of what to write to the son of a close friend, Beatrix Potter wrote an illustrated letter that became the basis of her most famous book.
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UNABLE to think of anything to write to Noel, the five-year-old son of her friend and former governess Annie Moore, Beatrix Potter decided to tell him a story. “I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits, whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter.”
Inspired partly by the antics of her own pet rabbits and what she knew about wild rabbits, but mostly drawn from Potter’s active imagination, the story so delighted Noel that she did much the same thing in other letters she wrote to children.
All were illustrated with Potter’s charming drawings. The children all cherished their letters and it encouraged Potter to turn them into a book. Despite initially being rejected by numerous publishers, her tales of animals in the English countryside became bestsellers and have remained in print for more than a century.
Her best known, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, has been given the big screen treatment in a new film which opens in cinemas on Thursday. While the film puts something of a modern spin on the character and the story, it may inspire audiences to discover (or perhaps rediscover) Potter’s original rabbit in print.
Born Helen Beatrix Potter on July 28, 1866, in Kensington, London, to barrister Rupert Potter and his wife Helen. Both parents had a talent for art and Rupert was also passionate about photography, he often took his daughter to places such as the Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert) and instilled in her a love of art.
She delighted in filling scrapbooks with drawings of everything she saw, especially animals in the countryside, where she and her brother Bertram were allowed to spend time on their own. Occasionally rather than merely capturing creatures on paper she and Bertram catch them and bring them home.
Being a girl from a well-to-do family in Victorian England Potter was not expected to go to school and university and was educated mostly by a series of governesses (including Moore). Potter was enrolled at the National Art Training School in South Kensington to sit for her Second Grade Art Student certificate, but apart from that she was largely educated at home.
Appointed “household supervisor” by her parents she had plenty of leisure time to study and became an accomplished naturalist, noted particularly for her accurate paintings of fungi. But when her paper on the theory of fungi spore germination was delivered to the Linnean Society in 1897, it was rejected because she was a woman.
However, by then she had written many letters to the children of friends, telling her animal tales, and was encouraged by her friends to publish them. She borrowed back the letter she had written to Noel and set about turning it into a book. With her drawings and the verses written by her friend and poet Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, who had inspired her love of the Lake District in Cumbria and its conservation, she began trying to sell the manuscript to publishers.
After several rejections she printed 200 copies at her own expense, giving many away but selling some copies for a shilling. They were so popular that she printed more. Eventually a copy was sent to a publisher who liked the story and the pictures but didn’t think much of the Canon’s poetry.
Potter rewrote the story in prose and in 1902 The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published. She insisted that the book be affordable and was printed small enough for a child to hold. The first print run of 8000 sold out quickly and by the end of 1903 more than 50,000 copies had sold. Potter followed the book with more animal stories about a range of other creatures. While ostensibly aimed at children, some of her creatures satirised humans and human society in subtle ways. She proved to be a canny businesswoman and capitalised on the merchandising potential of her books, perhaps the first author to do so.
In 1905 she received a marriage proposal from her editor Norman Warne. But despite her parents’ objections on the grounds that Warne was “beneath her”, she accepted. A month later Warne died unexpectedly from a blood disorder.
Perhaps to console herself Potter bought Hill Top Farm, near the village of Sawrey, in the Lake District. She later married a local solicitor, William Heelis, again in defiance of her parents, and moved to the Lake District to live.
She became deeply involved in country life, mucking in to work on the farm, breeding Herdwick sheep (a domestic breed native to the Lake District), and getting involved in conservation efforts around Cumbria’s countryside.
Potter continued writing and illustrating her animal stories until her eyesight began to fail in the late 1920s.
She died of pneumonia in 1943, leaving a lot of her original artwork and a large portion of her property to the National Trust.
Originally published as Beatrix Potter’s letter to friend’s son became basis of The Tales of Peter Rabbit
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