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Summary
Summary
Peter Rabbit, Mr. McGregor, and many other Beatrix Potter characters remain in the hearts of millions. However, though Potter is a household name around the world, few know the woman behind the illustrations. Her personal life, including a romantic relationship with her publisher, Norman Warne, and her significant achievements outside of children's literature remain largely unknown. In Linda Lear's enchanting new biography, we get the life story of this incredible, funny, and independent woman. As one of the first female naturalists in the world, Potter brought the beauty and importance of nature back into the imagination at a time when plunder was more popular than preservation. Through her art she sought to encourage conservation and change the world. With never before seen illustrations and intimate detail, Lear goes beyond our perrenial fascination with Potter as a writer and illustrator of children's books, and delves deeply into the life of a most unusual and gifted woman--one whose art was timeless, and whose generosity left an indelible imprint on the countryside.
Author Notes
LINDA LEAR, a professor of environmental history and author of the prize-winning biography Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature , is an enthusiastic horticulturalist and collector of botanical art. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), creator of the immortal Peter Rabbit, is known as an avid writer of comical illustrated letters to friends and as an assertive marketer of her illustrations, and this lively volume also captures her energetic participation in Victorian-era natural history research and conservation. Environmental historian Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature) relates that, as a child in an upper-middle-class family, Potter sketched flowers, dead animals and live lizards, insects and rodents that she brought home. "Rabbits were caught, tamed, sketched, painted" by young Beatrix and her brother, Bertram. In 1893, while traveling with her pet rabbit, Peter Piper, and seeking unusual fungi with self-taught mycologist Charles McIntosh, Potter jotted an illustrated note "about a disobedient young rabbit called `Peter' " to an ailing child friend and sketched Peter's nemesis, a McIntosh-look-alike farmer called Mr. McGregor, creating "two fictional characters that one day would be world-famous." Lear judges Potter "a brilliant amateur" naturalist who expressed strong convictions about land preservation. Potter's witty journals, with their close observations of people, animals, objects and places, serve as the basis for Lear's engrossing account, which will appeal to ecologists, historians, child lit buffs and those who want to know the real Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Benjamin Bunny. A movie, Miss Potter, also releases in January. 16 pages of color illus., 8 pages of b&w illus. not seen by PW. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Of Interest to Adults) Lear, a former professor of environmental history and author of a well-regarded biography of Rachel Carson, brings a valuable new perspective to a much-debated life. The lingering impression that Beatrix Potter was entrapped by stern Victorian parents and only escaped late in life to marry, raise sheep, and give up creating those wonderful little books is not so much contradicted here as buried in an avalanche of evidence: Lear presents enough historical context and documentation to transform Potter's life story from one of sad limitation to a roster of fine accomplishments, crowned with a happy thirty-year marriage. Her near-abandonment of producing books sprang not just from her liberation from London and her love of farming but from distress at publisher Harold Warne's chicanery and her own failing eyesight. Country lawyer William Heelis became not only Potter's husband but also her able partner in acquiring and managing the many farms and estates -- well over four thousand acres -- that she later bequeathed to the National Trust. With tact, zest, and skill (and only occasional curmudgeonly expostulation), Mrs. Heelis managed farming essentials -- hiring staff, bringing in the harvest, feeding her sheep dogs -- despite wartime shortages. Meanwhile, foreseeing that development must be limited if the Lake Country celebrated in her books was to be preserved, she devoted creative and untiring effort to that cause; she's justly credited here with exemplary success. Potter's entire life is presented in as much detail as her last thirty happy years are, beginning with significant ancestors and their intellectual and financial heritage as well as the Unitarianism that curtailed the Potters' social circle in London. Lear's account of the shy young woman's early botanical drawings and research is fascinating, not least for its revelation of character. A brilliant naturalist,though technically an amateur, Potter suffered the condescension of the Linnean Society, which failed, largely because of her sex, to perceive her real achievements; yet, with the honest and indomitable spirit that characterized her whole life, she never lost faith in her own powers of observation. Beatrix Potter covers the genesis of the children's books with extensive reference to their actual settings, linking the stories with the people, creatures, and events that inspired them and describing the books themselves with cogent appreciation. Praising the accuracy and precision of Potter's art and ""perfect marriage of word and image,"" Lear credits her with inventing a new kind of animal fable, ""a triumph of fantasy rooted in fact."" She draws Potter's intimates with complexity and depth: her father a proper Victorian gentleman with a creative bent and considerable love for his daughter; her mother selfish, conventional, and controlling. Norman Warne, Beatrix's first love, was a gifted editor with whom she worked closely for years. Knowledgeable, meticulous Mr. Heelis, his talents nicely complementary to his wife's, was evidently a best friend with whom she was entirely content. Beatrix herself is most generously revealed via Lear's excellent descriptions and abundance of telling quotes: the minutiae of her disparate lives as dutiful daughter, gifted scientist, artist and author, and innovative farmer with a respect for tradition; her relationships with family, fellow farmers, publishers, and friends, including such Americans as Anne Carroll Moore and the Horn Book's own Bertha Mahony Miller (see Lolly Robinson's ""Beatrix & Bertha,"" July/August 2006). Potter could be crusty with those she deemed intrusive or incompetent; still, she valued a wide circle of frequent correspondents. Lear seems to have consulted nearly all of the vast number of available primary sources with diligence and intelligence. Her book is splendidly documented: virtually every paragraph has its endnote, often with several citations. Lear is not only an impeccable historian but a grand storyteller, worthy of her subject; her writing is a pleasure -- a suitable companion to Potter's own marvelously succinct and ironical style. Lear's point of view as a naturalist is a perfect match for Potter's own lifelong dedication to natural history and the preservation of land, landscape, and community. Sixty-nine illustrations, in color inserts, help readers visualize art, people, and settings. A ""select"" bibliography runs to fourteen pages; there's a map of Beatrix Potter's Lakeland, and an index. Altogether, this is a magisterial and definitive biography, a delight in every way. joanna rudge long Copryight 2007 of The Horn Book, Inc. All rights reserved. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A stolid biography by environmental historian Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, 1997) that gets at the facts of Victorian Potter's life but does not bother addressing motivations and thwarted ambition. Born in 1866, Potter, a child of wealthy Unitarians in the calico manufacturing business, enjoyed a privileged upbringing between South Kensington, London, and the country homes of her grandparents in the Lake District and in Perthshire, Scotland. These locales stimulated her early interest in natural history, often a passion for the Victorians. Never sent to school as her younger brother was, but taught at home by tutors, Potter demonstrated an early talent for drawing, developed by copying animals and plants from nature, especially fungi and lichen viewed through a microscope. She eventually developed some theories about fungi reproduction, but they were dismissed as amateurish. (Lear argues that she could have become an expert in any number of fields, such as botany, archaeology, geology and mycology.) Approaching spinsterhood, and seething against a domineering mother, she first published some of her animal designs in holiday cards, then grew determined to become financially independent. Her first Peter Rabbit work had been fashioned in letters to the children of her former governess, and then published as a little book by Frederick Warne in 1902. Her anthropomorphized rabbits were an instant hit, and they were followed quickly by tales of Squirrel Nutkin, the tailor of Gloucester, Hunca Munca, et al. She was for a time engaged to be married to her publisher's son, Norman Warne, but he died. Potter went on to achieve self-sufficiency with the purchase of her own Lake District home at Sawrey in 1905, and she later settled down to happy married farm life with Anglican barrister William Heelis. Although Lear had access to volumes of diaries and letters, her shaping of Potter's intriguing life is rather blockheaded. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Beatrix Potter had a passion for place that found aesthetic expression in the beautifully realized natural settings of her celebrated children's books ( The Tale of Peter Rabbit, etc.) and also practical expression in her less-well-known role as a successful landowner, farm manager, and sheep breeder. Accordingly, Lear, who is a professor of environmental history, gives special attention to the places that provided the settings for Potter's books and for her real-life evolution as a shrewd businesswoman and ardent preservationist of the rural landscape of her beloved Lake District (when she died in 1943, she left vast holdings of land and property to Britain's National Trust). The social settings and circumstances of Potter's early life as a Victorian child of sometimes stultifying privilege are also beautifully realized. And Lear's depiction of Potter's later struggle for personal and financial independence invests an otherwise quiet life with drama and even a degree of suspense. Potter was a famously close observer of the world around her, and Lear is an equally close observer of her subject. The result is a meticulously researched and brilliantly re-created life that, despite its length and accretion of detail, is endlessly fascinating and often illuminating. It is altogether a remarkable achievement. --Michael Cart Copyright 2006 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), author/illustrator of more than 20 "little books" for children, is known for her collection of Peter Rabbit tales. In this remarkable biography, Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature) provides "an exploration of the life and times of a woman who is a household name on several continents, but whose personal life and significant scientific and environmental accomplishments remain largely unknown." Drawing on Potter's journal, letters, and many other primary and secondary sources, Lear contends that Potter brought nature back into the English imagination with her books and illustrations. Readers learn about Potter's difficult parents, the prescribed Victorian code of conduct in which she grew up, her relationship with her publisher, her reaction to the death of her first fianc?, and her role as a major benefactor of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest and Natural Beauty. The detailed analysis of Potter's works enables Lear to comment on Potter's artistry in storytelling and illustrating. The author's meticulous attention to detail is obvious throughout, not to mention her elegant writing and exceptional scholarship. Highly recommended for academic, special, and public libraries.-Kathryn R. Bartelt, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgements | p. ix |
| List of Illustrations | p. xv |
| Map | p. xviii |
| Prologue: Ownership | p. 3 |
| 1 Roots | p. 9 |
| 2 Exposures | p. 25 |
| 3 Transitions | p. 49 |
| 4 Experiments | p. 76 |
| 5 Discoveries | p. 104 |
| 6 Fantasies | p. 130 |
| 7 Ideas | p. 156 |
| 8 Realities | p. 170 |
| 9 Losses | p. 193 |
| 10 Stories | p. 207 |
| 11 Diversions | p. 227 |
| 12 Satisfactions | p. 249 |
| 13 Partnerships | p. 263 |
| 14 Salvages | p. 284 |
| 15 Opportunities | p. 298 |
| 16 Legacies | p. 318 |
| 17 Americans | p. 337 |
| 18 Ventures | p. 357 |
| 19 Passages | p. 381 |
| 20 Challenges | p. 405 |
| 21 Reflections | p. 427 |
| Epilogue: Stewardship | p. 441 |
| Notes | p. 448 |
| Select Bibliography | p. 541 |
| Index | p. 555 |