Beatrix potter biography
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Born in London, Beatrix Potter felt drawn to the raph from Hulton Archive / Getty
Many teen-agers will go to great lengths to keep their diaries private—I kept a little key for mine in a wooden jewelry box, which I guarded jealously—but the children’s book author Beatrix Potter took it to an extreme. Between the ages of fourteen and thirty, she fastidiously recorded observations about her stiff Victorian world in several journals. Her parents, descendants of wealthy cotton merchants in the North of England, were rich and exceedingly proper. Perhaps to protect her work, Potter wrote in a minuscule handwriting using a code that only she could understand. Her journals remained a mystery until , when a collector, searching through them, identified a passing reference to Louis XVI, and then painstakingly decoded years’ worth of Potter’s innermost thoughts. (Fans are nosy, too).
In public, Potter, the author of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” and “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny,” whose books
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Beatrix Potter remains one of the world's best-selling and best-loved children's authors. She wrote and illustrated 28 books, including her 23 Tales which have sold more than million copies worldwide. In her later years, she became a farmer and sheep breeder and helped protect thousands of acres of nation in the Lake District.
Helen Beatrix Potter was born on 28 July and lived for much of the first 47 years of her life at her family's home at 2 Bolton Gardens in Kensington, then a semi-rural part of London. The Potter family were well connected. Edmund, Beatrix's paternal grandfather, had become wealthy bygd establishing a successful mechanised calico printing works at Dinting Vale in Glossop, Derbyshire, and later became a frikostig MP for Carlisle, whilst Beatrix's maternal grandfather, John Leech, was a merchant who inherited a cotton mill at Stalybridge in Cheshire.
The Potter family had artistic leanings. Edmund was co-founder of the Manchester School of Design. Her grandmot
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Beatrix Potter
British children's writer and illustrator (–)
This article is about the author. For the sociologist and reformer born Beatrice Potter, see Beatrice Webb. For American impersonator, see Helen Potter.
Beatrix Potter | |
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Potter in | |
Born | Helen Beatrix Potter ()28 July West Brompton, London, England |
Died | 22 December () (aged77) Near Sawrey, Lancashire, England |
Occupation | Children's author and illustrator |
Notable works | The Tale of Peter Rabbit |
Spouse | William Heelis (m.) |
Partner | Norman Warne (fiance; died before marriage) |
Relatives | Edmund Potter (grandfather) |
Helen Beatrix Heelis (néePotter; 28 July 22 December ), usually known as Beatrix Potter (BEE-ə-triks),[1] was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which was her first commercially pu