Mice in a shoe

ca. 1905 · Watercolour · 21 × 17.7 cm

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Victoria and Albert Museum

London, Storbritannien

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Kontrolleret: for 11 dage siden
Uændret siden: 25. sep. 2026
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Om værket

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) is one of the world's best-loved children's authors and illustrators. She wrote the majority of the twenty-three Original Peter Rabbit Books between 1901 and 1913. The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Frederick Warne, 1902) is her most famous and best-loved tale.

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As early as 1893 Beatrix Potter had illustrated a rhyme that appears in the 1917 Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes. Following her completion of the drawings for The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902, she began to think seriously about a book of rhymes, and worked on the project between 1902 and 1905, while also producing more of her well-known ‘little books’. Following the death of her editor and, by then, fiancé, Norman Warne, in 1905, the project was put aside and left untouched for many years, before being taken up again in June 1917; Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes was published in an abridged edition that October. This design is a slight variant of an illustration used in the book, and dates from around 1905. It illustrates the first verse of Potter’s own rhyme:

You know the old woman

who lived in a shoe?

And had so many children

She didn’t know what to do?

I think if she lived in

a little shoe-house-

That little old woman was

surely a mouse!

Victoria and Albert Museum

Oplysninger

Inventarnummer: BP.516

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Illustrations Mice Shoes

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Tegninger & akvareller Akvarel Modernisme 1900-tallet British

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Victoria and Albert Museum: museets åbne data · hentet for 11 dage siden
Billede: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Imens i livet hos Beatrix Potter

Hele livet

1903
A patented Peter Rabbit toy: the birth of character merchandising
In 1903 Beatrix made and patented a Peter Rabbit doll — he became the first fictional character made into a patented soft toy, and so the oldest licensed character. Painting books, board games, wallpaper, figurines, baby blankets and china tea-sets followed under licence from her publisher Warne, earning her an independent income, and Harrods catalogues list Peter merchandise from at least 1910.
1903–1922
Two or three books a year with the editor Norman Warne
“The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin” and “The Tailor of Gloucester” followed “Peter Rabbit” in 1903 — both also began as picture letters to the Moore children. Working with the editor Norman Warne, Beatrix published two or three little books a year — 23 in all in that format, the last, in 1922, being “Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes”; the royalties gave her a degree of independence, though she still lived with her parents.
1905
Engagement to Norman Warne, and his death
In 1905 Beatrix and her publisher Norman Warne became unofficially engaged; her parents objected because Warne was “in trade” and so socially unsuitable. The engagement lasted only a month: Warne died of a blood disease at the age of 37.
1905
Buys Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey
In 1905, with the proceeds of her books and a small legacy from an aunt, Beatrix bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in the Lake District, six miles west of Lake Windermere. She and Warne may have hoped it would be their holiday home, but after his death she went ahead with the purchase, as she had always wanted to own that farm and live in “that charming village”.
1905–1909
Learning to farm: a tenant, sheep and Castle Farm
The tenant farmer John Cannon and his family stayed on to run the farm while Beatrix made improvements and learned the techniques of fell farming and livestock; the following year she added sheep. To protect her boundaries she turned to the Hawkshead solicitors W. H. Heelis & Son and, with William Heelis acting for her, bought adjoining pasture — in 1909 the 20 acres of Castle Farm across the road from Hill Top.
1905–1913 · Uddannelse
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