Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist. She was best known for her children’s books featuring animals, such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease at her home in Near Sawrey, Cumbria, at the age of 77.
About Beatrix Potter in brief
Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist. She was best known for her children’s books featuring animals, such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease at her home in Near Sawrey, Cumbria, at the age of 77. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now constitutes the Lake District National Park. Potter’s books continue to sell throughout the world in many languages with her stories being retold in songs, films, ballet and animations, and her life depicted in a feature film and television film. Beatrix was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She and her younger brother Walter Bertram kept a variety of pets — mice, hedgehog and some small rabbits, along with butterflies and other insects — which they observed and drew endlessly. In July 2014, Beatrix had personally given a number of her own original hand-painted illustrations to the two daughters of Arthur and Harriet Lupton, who were cousins to both Beatrix and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. The house where Beatrix lived until her marriage in 1913 was destroyed in the Blitz. A blue plaque on the school building testifies to the former site of the Potter home, where Bousfield Primary School now stands where the house once was. Potter was also a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation. She continued to write and illustrate, and to design spin-off merchandise based on her children’s books for British publisher Warne until the duties of land management and her diminishing eyesight made it difficult to continue.
Potter wrote thirty books; the best known being her twenty-three children’s tales. She also wrote a series of cookery books, including a cookery magazine and a children’s cookery book collection, which were published in the early 1900s. Her husband, William Heelis, was a respected local solicitor from Hawkshead, and she married him in 1913. She had eight children, and eight of her children were the recipients of many of her delightful picture letters, which later suggested that Beatrix might make good children’s reading companions. She died in 1943, leaving almost all her property to the National Trust. She left a legacy of more than £1,000,000 to the Cumbrian National Park and the National Museum of Nature and Science, and a collection of her paintings to the British Museum. She will be remembered as one of the most influential women of the 20th century, and as a pioneer in the field of mycology and the study of fungi. Her family were English Unitarians, associated with dissenting Protestant congregations, influential in 19th century England, that affirmed the oneness of God and that rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Her parents were artistically talented, and Rupert was an adept amateur photographer, and by the early 1890s, he was extremely wealthy.
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This page is based on the article Beatrix Potter published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
