Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature (Hardcover)

~ Linda Lear (Author) "IT WAS A COLD, WET November day in 1918..." (more)
Key Phrases: yew tree, most active volcano, kindred nature, Beatrix Potter, Hill Top, Lake District (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.)
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From Booklist

*Starred 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 © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312369344
• ISBN-13: 978-0312369347
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #423,191 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Miss Potter, January 13, 2007

By	Susan Wittig Albert (Texas) - See all my reviews

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.

42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sets a high standard for the biography genre, February 16, 2007

By	Corinne H. Smith (Athol, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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!

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid book about an amazing person, March 22, 2007

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.