Beatrix Potter, creator of Peter Rabbit, was born in Victorian England in 1866, in the part of London known as Kensington. A typical family of that era, the Potters had a large home and many servants. Beatrix had her own nurse, and spent many hours alone learning reading, writing, art and music from her governess. Her brother Bernard, 6 years younger, was sent away for his schooling.
Summer holidays were spent in Scotland and its lake areas each year. She and her brother explored the fields and the woods, catching and taming wild animals and painting and sketching all they came upon. Beatrix Potter developed her love of nature as a result of these Scotland summers.
One summer’s visit to Windermere Beatrix Potter and brother Bernard befriended Canon Rawnsley, the local vicar. Disturbed by tourism and industrialization’s effect on the Lake District’s natural beauty, the vicar had a great deal of influence on Beatrix’s life long mission of preserving nature and the countryside.
Beatrix and Bertram Potter amassed together quite a collection of animals as pets for their schoolroom. All at the same time their classroom housed a green frog, a few water newts, two lizards, a snake, a rabbit and a tortoise.
Beatrix Potter’s favorite pet was her first rabbit, which she named Benjamin Bunny.
Engaged in her early adulthood to Norman Warner, a local publisher, Beatrix Potter was devastated by his untimely death before their wedding. She was to remain single until age 47, when she married an attorney and resident of her beloved Scotland lake district. His name was William Heelis. Beatrix Potter dedicated these later years to Lake District ecological preservation. She left a large part of her estate to The National Trust, requiring her land’s preservation as a living landscape.
