Beatrix Potter1866–1943Watercolour
About the work
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.
This is a variant cover illustration for The Tale of Tom Kitten, which was published in 1907. There are only minor differences between this and the illustration that was used on the front cover of the book, showing Tom Kitten in his blue suit, with some of the buttons missing. In the story, Tom Kitten grows fat, causing several of the buttons to burst off. His mother, Tabitha Twitchit sews them on again.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- BP.510
Meanwhile, in the life of Beatrix Potter
The whole life1903–1922
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.
