The newest Royal Mail First Day
Cover collection is dedicated to Beatrix Potter. As many know, Beatrix Potter
was a children’s author and illustrator, natural scientist, farmer and
preservationist. Her series of 23 original ‘Peter Rabbit’ books has been
translated into more than 45 languages.
Helen Beatrix Potter was born on
28 July 1866 in Kensington, London, and had a typical Victorian upper-middle
class upbringing. As a young child she spent much time alone, or with her
nanny, in the nursery, but during this time she developed a fascination for the
natural world. Together with her younger brother Bertram, she looked after a
menagerie of pets including lizards, newts, mice and rabbits.
Immersed in the arts from an
early age – her mother was a watercolourist and her father a photographer – she
was inspired to sketch and paint flora and fauna during holidays in Scotland
and the Lake District, and went on to become a publishing illustrator. But it
was the reworking of the stories and drawings in her picture-letters to
children that led to the publication of The
Tale of Peter Rabbit and the start of a successful literary career. Beatrix bought many properties in
the Lake District, where she embraced life as a farmer, sheep breeder and
conservationist until her death in 1943.
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