Beatrix Potter delighted people with her imaginative stories and illustrations of rabbits and other animals. She published more than 20 children's books, including The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and her stories remain popular with children throughout the world.
Helen Beatrix Potter was born on July 26, 1866, in London, England. Although her brother, Bertram, attended school, Beatrix was educated by a nanny who taught her to read and write and encouraged her love of music and art. Beatrix's family was wealthy, and when Beatrix was a child, they began ?spending their summers in Scotland and in England's rural Lake District, where she explored the woods and fell in love with nature. Although she had very few friends, Beatrix had many pets throughout her childhood. Rabbits, hedgehogs, dogs and others were kept in her playroom. Beatrix made up stories about her animals, drawing pictures to go along with them.
In 1890, when Beatrix was 24, she sent some of her drawings to a publishing company in Germany. The company, Hildesheimer & Faulkner, bought all six of the drawings and asked for more! A few years later, Beatrix learned that her former nanny's child had scarlet fever. To entertain him while he was sick, she wrote a picture story about a naughty little rabbit named Peter. That story, called The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was published as a book in 1902. The Tale of Peter Rabbit originally had only black-and-white pictures in it and had been rejected by six different publishers. But once it was finally published, it was an instant success. And Beatrix went on to write and illustrate many more imaginative children's books filled with animals that acted ?like humans.
Having fallen in love with the Lake District as a child, Beatrix bought her first farm there in the early 1900s with the money she made from The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Very concerned with preserving the countryside, she eventually bought more than 4,000 acres in the area to protect it and used her Hill Top farm as a setting for many of her books. When Beatrix died on December 22, 1943, she left her Lake District land to The National Trust to make sure it would never be developed.
Written by Tamar Burris, a former elementary school teacher who now works as a freelance writer and curriculum developer for PBS, the Discovery Channel and other education-related companies. Sources: Beatrix Potter at the World of Peter Rabbit, www.peterrabbit.com; Women's Children's Book Illustrators-Beatrix Potter, www.ortakales.com/illustrators/Potter.html.
