Beatrix Potter was an author and illustrator of children’s books about animals, best known for The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She was also an animal lover and amateur scientist, but was discouraged from pursuing science due to societal norms. She had an impressive list of unusual pets and was close to her rabbits and mouse. Potter met Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, who founded the National Trust, and later developed an interest in science, particularly fungi and lichens. She faced discrimination from scientific institutions due to her gender. Potter married and settled at Hill Top Farm, where she continued to write and became president of the Herdwick Sheep Farmers Association. She donated most of her land to the National Trust and died in 1943.
Beatrix Potter is the author and illustrator of a number of children’s books about animals. She is best remembered for her first story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, first published in 1902. She was also an animal lover and an amateur scientist, although she was discouraged from her scientific pursuits by society Victorian where she lived.
Potter was born on July 28, 1866 in Kensington, London. His parents, Rupert William and Helen Potter, both inherited wealth and spent most of their time socialising, although his father was an accomplished lawyer. His only sibling, a younger brother named Bertram, went to boarding school, and her main childhood companions were consequently his pets.
Beatrix Potter had an indiscriminate love of animals and nature and an impressive list of unusual pets, including frogs, newts and a bat. Potter also had two rabbits and a mouse which she would later immortalize in her own books: Benjamin Bunny, Peter Rabbit and Samuel Whiskers. She was very close to Peter and took him everywhere on a leash. She drew her animals, developing the skill that she would later use in her scientific endeavors and in her beloved books.
When she was 15, Beatrix Potter met Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, the vicar of the English Lake District where her family had rented a summer house. She impressed the importance of her conservation on Potter, as they both shared a love of their natural environment, and later founded the National Trust, to which Beatrix Potter would bequeath nearly all of her property upon her death. her. She also began keeping a secret coded diary around this time, a practice she would continue until she was 30 years old.
In her twenties, Beatrix Potter developed an interest in science, especially fungi and lichens. You were one of the first to postulate that lichens are a symbiosis of fungi and bacteria, a fact now unanimously accepted by the scientific community. She has also completed an extensive series of detailed watercolors of microscopic images of fungi and has written articles on the subject. Although Potter was supported in her work by her uncle, the famous chemist Henry Enfield Roscoe, and respected throughout the country, scientific institutions of the time refused to accept her as a student, admit her to meetings or publish her work. because she was a woman. The Linnean Society issued an official apology to Potter in 2020.
Beatrix Potter first wrote her animal stories as a hobe and her family encouraged her to seek publication. Although she initially had difficulty finding a publisher for The Tale of Peter Rabbit, it was a great success. She became engaged to her publisher, Norman Warne, although her family objected. Sadly, she died shortly after the engagement.
With her own income growing, Beatrix Potter began buying land, starting with Hill Top Farm in the Lake District. Potter married her solicitor, William Heelis, in 1914, and the two settled at Hill Top Farm. She continued to write into her sixties, even as her eyesight began to fail. Many of her later books refer to Hill Top Farm. Although she and her husband were childless, they kept many pets, including a hedgehog named Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle after the title character of her 1905 book.
Potter also spent his time at Hill Top Farm herding and showing sheep, eventually becoming president of the Herdwick Sheep Farmers Association. She bought more land with her inheritance than hers from her parents and spent her last years with her husband at Castle Cottage in Sawrey. Beatrix Potter died on 22 December 1943. She A lifelong environmentalist, she donated the vast majority of the land she owned to the National Trust and had her ashes scattered across the countryside.
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