1 . The Enduring Appeal of Peter Rabbit

“I don’t know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits, whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter,” wrote Beatrix Potter, an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist in 1893, in a letter to a little boy who was suffering from a serious infectious disease.

Like many children-story authors, Potter was not a writer by profession. Her chief enthusiasm was natural history. Childhood family holidays in Perthshire and the Lake District had given her the freedom to experience the natural world first-hand.     1     Owing to Potter’s illustrations, the humanized rabbits seemed to exist in a recognizably real place. As Potter once admitted, the “careful botanical studies of my youth” informed the reality of her fantasy drawings.     2     In these images, Peter in the vegetable garden ate radishes (萝卜) or jumped off the wall.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit was first published by Frederick Warne in 1902.     3     However, Warne disagreed. Only after Potter had the book privately published did Warne change his mind. It was an immediate success, much to Potter’s surprise. “The public must be fond of rabbits! What a shocking quantity of Peter,” she said. The original tales, under the Warne imprint, are still available today.

    4     In 1903, she registered a Peter Rabbit doll, making him the first fictional character to be made into a patented stuffed toy. After that, there were licensed wallpapers, board games and painting books. She earned large amounts of money. After her death, almost all her property was left to the National Trust.