Beatrix Potter1866–1943Watercolour
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Victoria and Albert Museum
London, United Kingdom
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
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- The museum's own collection data
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 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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At first publishers rejected Beatrix's manuscript of 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor's Garden' so she decided to publish the story herself in an edition of 250 copies with black and white illustrations and a colour frontispiece. By the time her privately printed edition was published in December 1901 Frederick Warne had agreed to publish the story the following year as The Tale of Peter Rabbit. However, Warne specified that the story would have to be shorter with colour illustrations so early in 1902 Beatrix began editing her privately printed edition, removing eleven illustrations and altering the text accordingly. A black and white version of this illustration appeared in the privately printed edition and it was Beatrix's original intention to include a colour version in Warne's first edition. However, the colour version was eventually rejected and remained unused until 2002 when Warne reinstated it in a new edition marking the centenary of The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- LC 22/A/1
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In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 11 days ago
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Meanwhile, in the life of Beatrix Potter
The whole life1900–1901
A dummy book of the rabbit tale, printed at her own expense
In 1900 Beatrix revised her tale of the four little rabbits and made a dummy book of it — it has been suggested, in imitation of Helen Bannerman’s 1899 bestseller; no one would buy it. So in December 1901 she had it printed at her own expense for family and friends — in black and white, with a coloured frontispiece.
2 October 1902
“The Tale of Peter Rabbit” is published
Several publishers had turned the manuscript down, Frederick Warne & Co among them, but the firm, eager to enter the booming market for small-format children’s books, reconsidered on the advice of the artist L. Leslie Brooke; it declined Rawnsley’s verse version in favour of Beatrix’s own prose, and she agreed to colour her illustrations, choosing the new Hentschel three-colour process. “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” appeared on 2 October 1902 and was an immediate success.
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.
