Beatrix Potter

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Standard Name: Potter, Beatrix
Birth Name: Helen Beatrix Potter
Married Name: Helen Beatrix Heelis
BP gained fame as a writer of little books for children, about animals which to some degree resemble humans, illustrated in watercolour by herself. Some of them draw on fable, riddles, and fairy stories. She also created scientific drawings of plant life. Her ambitions as an author for adults remained largely unfulfilled.
Black-and-white photo portrait of Beatrix Potter taken at Birnamm Scotland in 1892. Standing and looking off-camera, she holds a rose in her left hand.
Photograph of the front jacket cover of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", by Beatrix Potter. Potter's drawing of Peter in his blue jacket, running on two legs before he loses his shoes, occupies the centre of the dark grey cover. Published by F. Warne and Co., 1902.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Deborah Moggach
From her early reading DM chose Richmal Crompton 's William Brown as her hero. She loved the way that Crompton and Beatrix Potter used words that would be new discoveries to most of their child readers.
Moggach, Deborah. “Autobiography”. Deborah Moggach: About Deborah.
Sanderson, Caroline. “Deborah Moggach interview”. Mslexia, No. 55, pp. 51 - 3.
53
Education Rosemary Sutcliff
Rosemary's mother was probably her most important teacher. She told her stories which, no matter how outlandish and fantastic, the very young Rosemary accepted as literal truth; she later imparted all kinds of varied information...
Education Elizabeth Taylor
Betty Coles's first reading was Beatrix Potter , then Lewis CarrollAlice in Wonderland and E. Nesbit , whose Bastable stories she read over and over again. Though her parents were not bookish people she progressed at...
Education Leonora Carrington
One of LC 's first teachers was her nanny, Mary Kavanagh , who tutored Leonora and told her ghost stories. When LC was a child she was also exposed to stories by Beatrix Potter ,...
Education Margiad Evans
An important book in Peggy's early childhood was Tom Kitten by Beatrix Potter . The delicate little home pictures of that delicious masterpiece spoke to her as potential artist.
Evans, Margiad. A Ray of Darkness. Arthur Barker, 1952.
101
Later favourites included Harriet Beecher Stowe
Education Margaret Forster
As a very small child MF was noisy and demanding and given to tantrums.
Forster, Margaret. Hidden Lives. Viking, 1995.
121-2
At two she talked in long sentences . . . and never stopped asking questions and wanting to try to...
Education Jane Gardam
When she was little Jean Mary Pearson's father (later unapproachable) would read Hans Andersen to her, which she loved. She was considered by her family not to be intelligent, but she taught herself to read...
Family and Intimate relationships Ann Bridge
Marie Louise (Day) Sanders , AB 's mother, was an American from New Orleans, Louisiana (where her English husband met her on a business trip). She died in 1922
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Hoehn, Matthew, editor. Catholic Authors. St Mary’s Abbey, 1952.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Brought up by her black Mammy...
Friends, Associates Angela Thirkell
Twelve-year-old Angela Mackail (later AT ) received a picture-letter from Beatrix Potter (a neighbour and a very recently published author) featuring a rabbit and two squirrels.
Strickland, Margot. Angela Thirkell: Portrait of a Lady Novelist. Duckworth, 1977.
19-20, illustration 6
Intertextuality and Influence Louisa May Alcott
Following her death, G. K. Chesterton in a laudatory (if sexist) review classed LMA with Austen as an early realist, and praised her apt depictions of human truths.
Chesterton, G. K. “Louisa Alcott”. Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott, edited by Madeleine B. Stern, G. K. Hall, 1984, pp. 212 - 14.
213-14
She was a favourite writer...
Intertextuality and Influence Maria Edgeworth
Literary memoirs and old second-hand illustrated editions testify to ME 's enormously wide juvenile audience during the Victorian period. She influenced the work of later children's writers as various as Louisa May Alcott , Frances Hodgson Burnett
Publishing Rumer Godden
She was commissioned to write this book by Frederick Warne and Company , Potter's publishers, having established herself as a Potter admirer by talks, an anniversary New York Times article, and her friendship with Leslie Linder
Publishing Alison Uttley
AU rewrote it for eventual publication by Collins . She sent a set of the Little Grey Rabbit books as a wedding present to Princess Elizabeth in 1947 (and had, she said, a charming thank-you...
Residence Barbara Cartland
Part of the appeal of Camfield Place for her was its storied history: an oak tree in the garden is said to mark the place where Elizabeth I shot her first stag, and from 1867...
Textual Features E. Nesbit
The guardian of two young cousins blows their inheritance and absconds leaving them nothing but a house and five hundred pounds. Fresh from school, the two girls respond differently: Lucilla is anxious but Jane Quested...

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