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Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

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If you have fond memories of the Tale of Peter Rabbit from your childhood; or if you have an interest in women who bravely challenged a social destiny that seemed foregone and inevitable; or if you are interested in naturalism and the history of preservation, you will enjoy and learn from Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, by environmental historian Linda Lear.

Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866 to wealthy Victorian parents. From early childhood, she was passionately interested in the natural world and drew what she saw in meticulous, painstaking detail, using as models the many animals that she and her brother collected during family holidays. These animal drawings became increasingly imaginative until they at last came to life in the delightful characters that populate The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck and other books, all of which became phenomenal bestsellers.

In 1905, after the death of her fiancé and editor, Norman Warne, Potter used the royalties from her books and a small inheritance from an aunt to purchase a farm in the hamlet of Near Sawrey, in the Lake District. There, she met Willie Heelis, a country lawyer who in 1913 became her husband, and together they set about fulfilling a dream they shared: preserving and protecting the Lake District from the despoliation of commercial development. They lived and worked happily together until 1943, when Beatrix Potter Heelis died.

Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature is the most exhaustive and rigorous examination of Potter's life to date. Linda Lear skillfully covers the material that's been been made available by earlier biographers, Margaret Lane and Judy Taylor: the solitary childhood, the astonishing literary success, the dutiful attention to elderly parents, the retirement to marriage and rural farming life. But Lear breaks a good deal of new ground, as well, taking us deep into the experience of a gifted but very private woman with a "talent for reinventing herself." She not only tells the riveting story of a woman who seems to have led three lives, but also fully and meticulously documents her sources. Scholars will appreciate the endnotes, sources, references, and lists of primary and secondary material that Lear has provided, for it is the first time in the history of Potter scholarship that such a full and complete documentation has been made.

However, Lear never allows her responsibilities as a scholar to overshadow her fascination with the human story of Beatrix Potter. With tact, sensitivity, and a profound respect, she goes deeply within her subject to bring us a woman whose tragedies and triumphs seem very personal, compellingly immediate, and entirely real. Lear demonstrates that throughout Potter's long life, her imagination was fueled by a passion for nature, whether this was expressed in drawings of rabbits in blue coats with brass buttons, or in paintings of fungi, lovingly rendered, or in her love for the tenacious Herdwick sheep that populated the hills of the Lake District, or in her profound admiration for the traditional Lakeland lifeways of farmers and artisans. Within the larger context of environmental history that this biography provides, it is easy to see why and how Beatrix Potter became one of England's most important preservationists and greatest benefactors, leaving some 4,300 acres, including 15 farms, dozens of cottages, houses, and over 500 acres of woods to the National Trust. It was a magnificent gift, a model for gifts to come, and still, to this day, unique.

As is this biography. If you've enjoyed Beatrix Potter's "little books" or the movie, Miss Potter, you will want to read it.

Susan Wittig Albert is the author of The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter: The Tale of Hill Top Farm, The Tale of Holly How, The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood, The Tale of Hawthorn House, and four other forthcoming novels in the series. This review is excerpted from a longer review published on the website of the Story Circle Network.

This is the book we've been waiting for: the definitive chronicle of Beatrix Potter's life. Here we read -- with pleasure -- the details of her life, revealed many times in her own words in letters to friends, relatives, and publishing business associates. The woman who created the tale of Peter Rabbit in an illustrated letter to a favorite child was much more than a children's book author. She grew into a headstrong, independent woman who became a sheep farmer and who fell in love with England's Lake District and helped to save thousands of acres of it in conjunction with the National Trust. Hers is a miraculous story that should be shared, especially with teens who are feeling stifled by controlling parents. This is the sort of book that you almost don't want to finish because you don't want the visit to be over. We are just now realizing what an interesting person Beatrix Potter Heelis was! Thank you, Ms. Lear!

Beatrix Potter led a far more interesting life that I could have imagined. Raised as a proper young lady, she was assigned by her parents as the manager of their household. She was in charge of the servants and responsible to be sure that everything was done properly and well.

So while she was doing this, she studied (by herself of course, who would let a girl go to school) and became a rather reknown mycologist, making the breakthrough observation that lichens were a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae. She was proposed to be a member of the student body at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. But, of course, as a mere female she was turned down.

So beginning to make some drawings, and writing a few stories she became the J.K. Rowling of her time when she published a book 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit.' She went on to publish another 22 books, and to create a merchandising empire about the characters.

Making yet another switch in later life, she became a gentleman farmer, raising prizewinning sheep and cattle.

Ms. Lear has not only done a splendid job in writing this book, she deserves our thanks.

My wife bought the book and I picked it up by mistake, not intending to read a biography of the woman who gave us Peter Rabbit -and certainly not of Mrs.Tiggy-Winkle--of whom I have never heard (but Google had, a lot). I persevered, however, and soon got caught up in an eye-level account of the customs and mores of life in rural England, Scotland and Wales. I envy Potter her tough life-long struggle with her sheep, her neighbors and fellow farmers and her cottage. She lived among people she admired and respected and in a place she loved and thought was the most beautiful on earth. Buy this book for your wife, but read it first yourself.

Excellent!!! From the first page this book grips the reader in the background of England's finest nature illustrator of the nineteenth century.

See a new dimension to this famous children's author. Learn about her strong conservation efforts that preserved the English lake district.

A must read for all grown-up fans of Peter Rabbit and his friends.

Enjoyable read. Interesting woman. Although she is perhaps best known as the author of the the children's book "Peter Rabbit" Beatrix Potter, the woman, lead a full and useful life that was dedicated to preserving nature. This book tells the story of Beatrix Potter's life from the beginning, tracing her family's lineage, and ends with her death. If you're interested in learning more about Beatrix Potter beyond her image as the author and designer of childrens toys and wall paper, buy this book.

I'm a writer and illustrator of children's books. After reading Linda Lear's masterful biography of Beatrix Potter, I have a new role model, Beatrix Potter.I'm inspired by her devotion to her art, her spunky determination against many obstacles, and of course, her exceptional talent. Her interaction with her publisher was very familiar to me, and encouraging.
I'll read this book again soon. Thank you, Ms. Lear. You, too, are an exceptional craftsman of your art.

I'll have to admit that it took the movie Miss Potter to stir my interest in Beatrix Potter; once stirred however, I discovered that Miss Potter was truly a remarkable women. This book displays in a very well written manner the many facets of a life that went far beyond Peter Rabbit. My wife read it first, raved about it, and then turned it over to me. It didn't take long to see the source of her enthusiasm. The book gives a carefully documented look into the life of a young women in England during the first part of the 20th century.

Miss Potter was a most extraordinary young woman to say the least. The obstacles she had to overcome proved her to be a woman of great imagination and courage; her determination to be her own person, in spite of the societal challenges she faced shaped her into a woman of depth and devotion to her dreams and visions.

Over the course of her life, Beatrix Potter lived two greatly different lifestyles. First as an author and finally as a farmer; fortunately for her, her first life as an author helped her accomplish the dream of her second life, as Mrs. William Heelis, in the gift of thousands of acres of land in the English Lake District to the National Trust to be preserved for the people of England.

I would encourage all who have enjoyed Peter Rabbit to find out more about the exceptional woman who started it all.

This book is a worthy addition to anyone's library.

This was a well-written and extensively researched biography of Beatrix Potter. However, it was a very long story with a lot of repetitive elements and not very much really interesting happens in her life. She just keeps buying land, writing little books, and sketching everything. After awhile it becomes somewhat tedious, although she is to be admired for her extraordinary work ethic and devotion to nature.

Linda Lear's story about Beatrix Potter opens up a world so very far beyond the image of a Victorian author dabbling in children's books. Ms Potter was a self-taught naturalist who also happened to write stories and poetry for children. If you stop and really look at her illustrations, you understand how intimately she knew each animal she drew.

The first part of the book heavily concentrates on Beatrix's studies of fungi and her struggle to have her research accepted by the Natural History Museum's "experts". It is painfully obvious that she is being treated like a silly woman who doesn't really understand things like germination of spores and symbiotic relations, even though she was better informed than they. Beatrix will run into this chauvinism throughout her life but has the mettle to persevere until she succeeds. In 1942 when the antibiotic properties of penicillin were being investigated as having curative possibilities, Potter wrote in her notebook of how she and her mentor, the naturalist Charles McIntosh, had speculated about the application of a number of fungi in the same manner.

Her relation with Publisher Norman Warne brings her books and illustrations to publication; but more importantly, it gives her the financial independence which she seeks. It's not that she feels a burden to her parents, I think quite the opposite. They are, in fact, dependent on her to keep the house and staff running smoothly as well as arranging the moves to the properties which her father leases each summer in the Lake District. Thus her mother resists Beatrix's desire to marry Norman, judging him most unsuitable as a man in trade. She carries on, making up stories and poems and drawing the nature surrounding her. Her picture letters to the children of her former nanny form the basis for Peter Rabbit as well as Benjamin Bunny. The sketchbooks from a lifetime in the country provide the background to her stories, from Farmer McGregor's remarkable resemblance to Charles McIntosh to the pictures of fabrics she copied from the Victoria & Albert and used in The Tailor of Gloucester.

As Beatrix gains financially she buys Hill Top Farm near where the family spent their summers. The author's descriptions of the Lake District and Beatrix working to preserve the area through the National Trust make you yearn to jump on the next plane so you can walk the fells, visit Near Sawry and see for yourself Hill Top Farm and Castle Cottage knowing that they're still exactly as they were in the first half of the 20th century. She was so firm in her intention to maintain the character of the district, she refused to have electricity put into Hill Top Farm. Her writing and painting seem to have become secondary to the maintenance of her fell farms, breeding of Herdwicke Sheep & the preservation of the Lake District. She used her royalties plus the not inconsiderable inheritances from her family to enlarge her holdings. All of her properties were left to the National Trust & are all now contained in the Lake District National Park, just waiting for us to visit.

Even with her devotion to the character of the Lake District, Beatrix will always be best known for her stories and her wonderful paintings. The royalties & copyrights were bequeathed to Frederick Warne upon her husband's death. Warne Publishing has issued Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales. It is a welcome companion to Linda Lear's book which suffers only because there is not room for all the illustrations. No need to have a grandchild in hand to enjoy these tales with their very personal illustrations. They are for all of us.