PETER RABBIT

                                                A Naturalist as Well

      Beatrix Potter was very close to her dad, a wealthy barrister, but found her mother cold and domineering. As a child Beatrix had little contact with her family as she and her younger brother spent their time with a governess in rooms upstairs in the home. Unbelievably, she was in her mid-teens before joining the family for dinner.

     She started a journal at age fifteen and kept it until she was thirty. She wrote in code. The journal was discovered in 1950 but it took nine years to decode it. Some speculate that she used a code because she felt her mother was nosey and intrusive.  At sixteen a Vicar at a nearby church encouraged Beatrix to write and draw.

     A naturalist at an early age, she kept all kinds of critters, named them and created stories about them. As a young woman she had a profitable business drawing greeting cards.

     Vacations in Scotland during childhood sparked an interest in fungi, and she became an expert. She presented a paper on spore formation and other theories using a pseudonym, and had a male friend make the presentation. In the 1800s women did not do such things or attend male conventions.

     When her last governess left and had children Beatrix sent picture letters to the children, which became the beginning of her books. When six publishers rejected Peter Rabbit she self-published 150 copies, easily sold them to friends and then ordered 200 more copies. Peter, Flopsie, Mopsie and Cottontail have been famous ever since. She illustrated all of her books.

    In 1913, at 47, Beatrix married and thereafter was known as Beatrix Potter Heelis.  A sheep farmer’s wife, she only wrote four books after her marriage. However not idle, she is credited with saving the nearly extinct Herdwick sheep to a now thriving population. She was the first woman to serve as president of the Herdwick Sheep Association