Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

Potter’s was, Linda Lear reveals, a life inspired and enriched by nature.

Even as a child and a young woman, growing up in a wealthy, conventional London family, her imagination and artistic talent were fed by visits to the countryside.

She found personal and financial freedom through nature, first as a scientific illustrator, and then as the creator of the overnight bestseller Peter Rabbit
– which also revealed her to be a far-sighted marketer and merchandiser. It was also the little books that led Beatrix to her first great love: her editor and publisher Norman Warne, who died tragically just a month after he had proposed to her.

But Beatrix Potter was one of those rare individuals who is given a second chance of happiness. Her purchase of Hill Top Farm in the Lake District just after Warne’s death led to her reinvention as a successful landowner and country farmer, and eventually to a happy marriage to William Heelis. She became a conservationist in order to preserve the landscape that had inspired her art, and, through the lands she bequeathed to the National Trust on her death, saved whole areas of the Lake District for posterity.

At a time when plunder was more popular than preservation, she had brought nature back into the English imagination. Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature reveals a strong, humorous and independent woman, whose art was timeless, and whose generosity left an indelible imprint on the countryside.