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The Grandma is a great follower of literature in general and can affirm that children's literature is a very difficult genre because the public is demanding and requires an adequate vocabulary and reasoning to be understood by these very special readers. In Catalan literature, her favourite author is Joana Raspall and in English, authors such as Roald Dahl, J. K. Rowling or Beatrix Potter, the author who passed away on a day like today in 1943.
Helen Beatrix Heelis (née Potter; 28 July 1866-22 December 1943), usually known as Beatrix Potter, was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which was her first commercially published work in 1902. Her books, including The Tale of Jemima Puddle Duck and The Tale of Tom Kitten, have sold more than 250 million copies. An entrepreneur, Potter was a pioneer of character merchandising.
In 1903, Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy, making him the oldest licensed character.
Born into an upper-middle-class household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets and spent holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted. Potter's study and watercolours of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology. In her thirties, Potter self-published the highly successful children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Following this, Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full-time.
Potter wrote over sixty books, with the best known being her twenty-three children's tales. In 1905, using the proceeds from her books and a legacy from an aunt, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey, a village in the Lake District. Over the following decades, she purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape.
In 1913, at the age of 47, she married William Heelis (1871-1945), a respected local solicitor with an office in 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 merchandise based on her children's books for British publisher Warne until the duties of land management and her diminishing eyesight made it difficult to continue.
Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease on 22 December 1943 at her home in Near Sawrey at the age of 77, leaving almost all her property to the National Trust. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now constitutes the Lake District National Park. Potter's books continue to sell throughout the world in many languages with her stories being retold in songs, films, ballet, and animations, and her life is depicted in two films -The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1983) and Miss Potter (2006).
Potter's family on both sides were from the Manchester area. They were English Unitarians, associated with dissenting Protestant congregations, influential in 19th-century Britain, that affirmed the oneness of God and that rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Potter's paternal grandfather, Edmund Potter, from Glossop in Derbyshire, owned what was then the largest calico printing works in England, and later served as a Member of Parliament.
In the Victorian era, women of her class were privately educated and rarely went to university. Potter's parents encouraged her higher education, but the social norms of the time limited her academic career within Britain's institutions.
Beatrix Potter was interested in every branch of natural science except astronomy. Botany was a passion for most Victorians, and nature study was a popular enthusiasm. She collected fossils, studied archaeological artefacts from London excavations, and was interested in entomology.
In all these areas, she drew and painted her specimens with increasing skill. By the 1890s, her scientific interests centred on mycology. First drawn to fungi because of their colours and evanescence in nature and her delight in painting them, her interest deepened after meeting Charles McIntosh, a revered naturalist and amateur mycologist, during a summer holiday in Dunkeld 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 fungus spores (the agarics) and in 1895 developed a theory of their germination.
Through the connections of her uncle Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, a chemist and vice-chancellor of the University of London, she consulted with botanists at Kew Gardens, convincing George Massee of her ability to germinate spores and her theory of hybridisation. She did not believe in the theory of symbiosis proposed by Simon Schwendener, the German mycologist, as previously thought; instead, she proposed a more independent process of reproduction.
As a way to earn money in the 1890s, Potter printed Christmas cards of her own design, as well as cards for special occasions.
On 2 October 1902, The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published and became 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: 23 books in all. The last book in this format was Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes in 1922, a collection of favourite rhymes. Although The Tale of Little Pig Robinson was not published until 1930, it had been written much earlier. Potter continued creating her little books until after the First World War when her energies were increasingly directed toward her farming, sheep-breeding, and land conservation.
She visited Hill Top at every opportunity, and her 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.
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and The Tale of Tom Kitten are representative of Hill Top Farm and her farming life and reflect her happiness with her country life.
In one of her diary entries whilst travelling through Wales, Potter complained about the Welsh language. She wrote Machynlleth, wretched town, hardly a person could speak English, continuing Welsh seem a pleasant intelligent race, but I should think awkward to live with... the language is past description.
Potter continued to write stories and to draw, although mostly for her own pleasure.
In 1922, Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes, a collection of traditional English nursery rhymes, was published. 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 for her American readers, but illustrated by Katharine Sturges. A final folktale, Wag by Wall, was published posthumously by The Horn Book Magazine in 1944.
Potter was a generous patron of the Girl Guides, whose troops she allowed to make their summer encampments on her land, and whose company she enjoyed as an older woman.
Potter died on 22 December 1943 at Castle Cottage, and her remains were cremated at Carleton Crematorium, Blackpool.
More information: Beatrix Potter Society
Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say,
as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells
and rough land seeing every stone and flower
and patch of bog and cotton pass
where my old legs will never take me again.
Beatrix Potter
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