Key Facts about Beatrix Potter:
- July 28, 1866 – December 22, 1943
- Author of the much loved ‘Peter Rabbit’ books
- Also a naturalist, mycologist and early conservationist
- Strongly associated with the Lake District, England
A Short Biography of Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter was born at her family home in South Kensington, London, in the summer of 1866. Her father, Rupert, was a lawyer and investor who by the time Beatrix was an adult had become extremely wealthy. Her mother also came from a wealthy family. Her younger brother, Walter Bertram Potter, was born in 1872 and completed the small family.
Both her parents had artistic talents and her father was a keen amateur photography at a time when that was still a complex and relatively uncommon hobby.
Since the family belonged to a dissenting protestant group, the Unitarians, which would have put them at odds which many of their class, they decided to have Beatrix raised by private tutors. This was anyway not an unusual choice for the wealthy at that time, particularly for the education of girls.
Beatrix seems to have been fortunate in that her tutors were all talented, particularly her last one, Annie Moore, who being only three years older than Beatrix was more of an older sister than a tutor. They remained life-long friends and in fact it was Annie who first suggested to Beatrix that she publish the illustrated letters she regularly wrote to Annie’s eight children.
Beatrix also received private lessons in art and developed a distinctive style of watercolor painting which is where much of the charm of her books lies.
Her family regularly visited the Lake District (now the county of Cumbria) for summer holidays. In this beautiful region with its lakes and hills she fell in love with nature and made many paintings of plants, insects, fossils and especially fungi.
In 1892, while on holiday in Scotland she met Charles McIntosh, a skilled amateur naturalist and expert on fungi. Natural Science at that time still relied on the activities of amateurs, who were often the most knowledgeable experts in specific areas. Natural history enjoyed great popularity among all social classes in Victorian England and bridged class barriers, so it is not so surprising that Beatrix started corresponding regularly with McIntosh, who was the local postman in his village.
A Potter Drawn Specimen
McIntosh would mail Beatrix specimens, which she would paint, while he taught her taxonomy and how to make her illustrations more scientifically accurate. Beatrix became interested in the still-unresolved question of the time as to how fungi reproduced. In 1897 she submitted a paper on this subject to the Linnean Society – a famous biological society. However her theories did not agree with those of the time (although she would later be proved to be right) and pressure because she was a woman forced her to withdraw the paper. In 1997 the Linnean Society issued a public apology for their sexist treatment of Beatrix. So good were drawings that they were included in a major work on fungi in 1967.
Beatrix and her young brother kept many small pets, such as kittens, rabbits, guinea pigs and mice in their school-room. These formed the inspiration for the illustrations she began at a very early age to draw for her favorite stories.
Rebuffed as a scientist and easily bored, Beatrix began to sell some of these drawings to local publishers for greetings cards and in 1890 Benjamin Bunny, one of her enduring characters, made his first appearance to illustrate poems by the prolific song-writer Frederic Weatherley. She continued to sell illustrations throughout the 1890’s.
Then in 1900 she wrote and illustrated a story about four rabbits. At first unable to find a publisher she self-published the book and send it to family and friends. One friend, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, took her book to several publishers. In late 1902 the book was published as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
There was at that time a new growing market for small children’s books and Potter’s was a great success, in part, it has been suggested, because it lacked the moral message usually so obvious in Victorian children’s literature.
Over the next decade Beatrix wrote and published around two books a year, all very successful, until the outbreak of World War I seems to have suspended her work. There were to be other works published in the 1920’s, but that ten years period was the time of her major creative activity when all the most popular of her books were published.
Both Beatrix and her publisher, Frederick Warne & Co. made immense amounts of money from Peter Rabbit. Besides the books they realized the value of spin-off merchandise and marketed a Peter Rabbit doll in 1903, immediately after the first book. This was followed by wall-papers, china sets, games, figurines, blankets and other merchandise – a market that continues today.
In 1905 Beatrix became informally engaged to Norman Warne, the son of her publisher. Her family objected to his low-class status as a ‘tradesman’, but before the matter could be resolved Norman died of leukemia. They were in the process of buying a property – Hill Top Farm – in the Lake District and after Norman’s death Beatrix finalized the purchase and over the following years bought a number of surrounding farms as well, developing a large land-holding.
She visited the area as often as she could and it figured increasingly in her books. Through her land purchases she met a local solicitor, William Heelis and in 1915 they married. As her father had died the year before and Beatrix had inherited a large fortune, she moved to live with Heelis in Hill Top Farm and moved her elderly mother to a nearby property. She continued her land purchases and quickly became a major, prize-winning farmer of the local Herdwick sheep.
Her old friend Canon Rawnsley had founded the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, in 1895. This evolved into the National Trust, a major holder of historic properties in the UK. Beatrix sold some of her properties to the Trust and left the balance when she died to them, creating the nucleus of the Lake District National Park.
Beatrix continued to write and draw, but published little. She spent her later life farming and working to preserve the unique life of the Lake District. She and William lived happily together. They had no children but Beatrix involved herself in the large Heelis family until her death from pneumonia in 1943.
Beatrix Potter’s Legacy
Beatrix Potter remains a strong favorite with small children who grow up with her books, dishes, wallpaper and toys. Her simple stories emphasized the virtues of kindness and co-operation coupled with a love of nature and other creatures.
Her scientific work has come under scrutiny and been valued and vindicated.
Both the preservation of the beautiful Lake District and its success as a tourist destination owe much to the visionary work of Potter and Canon Rawnsley.
Sites to Visit
Hill Top Farm, Sawrey, Cumbria, England is a National Trust property preserved as it was when Beatrix lived there.
The Beatrix Potter Gallery, Hawkshead, Cumbria, was the office of William Heelis and now houses a collection of her drawings and illustrations.
There is a museum/exhibition, The World of Beatrix Potter, in Bowness-on-Windermere Cumbria.
The Birnam Institute, Exhibition Centre and Garden, Birnam, Perthshire, Scotland, emphasizes her naturalists relationship with McIntosh
Her archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London can be viewed by appointment.
The Perth Museum, Perth, Scotland has a collection of her scientific drawings.
Further Research on Beatrix Potter
A biography that emphasizes her scientific work is Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, 2007; Beatrix Potter: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius by Linda Lear, 2008.A good general biography is Beatrix Potter – Artist, Storyteller and Countrywoman by Judy Taylor, (1996).
There is a large collection of her writings and illustrations at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and smaller collections in the US at the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Children’s Library at Princeton University.
There are two dramatizations of her life– The Tale of Beatrix Potter (BBC, 1982) and Miss Potter (2006).
There is a ballet of her works – The Tales of Beatrix Potter, choreographed by Sir Frederic Ashton, choreography for the Royal Ballet – filmed in 1971 and performed regularly by many ballet companies around the world.
Exhibitions of both her scientific and book illustrations are given from time to time.
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