Overlooked no more: Beatrix Potter

[MsAmerica]

The New York Times is occasionally doing belated obits/bios on people whose deaths were unremarked at the time, especially women.

Overlooked no more: Beatrix Potter, author of 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit'

The year was 1900, and Potter, then in her mid-30s, had submitted her book, complete with her own intricate illustrations, to at least six publishers, according to her biographer Linda Lear. As the rejections flowed in, she unloaded her frustrations in a letter to a family friend, including a sketch depicting herself, little book in hand, arguing with a man in a long coat. “I wonder if that book will ever be printed,” she fumed.

She finally decided to print it herself. The next September, she took her savings to a private printer in London and ordered 250 copies of the book, which she distributed herself. The demand was so great that she soon needed to print 200 more. One early admirer, she wrote in a letter, was Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

artdaily.com/news/165977/Overlooked-no-more--Beatrix-Potter--author-of--The-Tale-of-Peter-Rabbit-

Thanks for this, @MsAmerica. Beatrix Potter really was a remarkable woman. That article mentions her journal - she invented the code herself and wrote it so fluently it took 13 years to decipher it. The initial breakthrough was only because Leslie Linder, who cracked it, had a stroke of luck and guessed that when '1793' appeared, it might refer to Louis the 16th's execution - that finally allowed him to puzzle the surrounding symbols out and break the code.

It’s fascinating to read - she was such a forthright, funny, endlessly curious young woman with a passion for knowledge of every kind; beady-eyed about her family and society. And talented, of course. She was much more than 'just' the woman who wrote Peter Rabbit.

C. S. Lewis loved Beatrix Potter, and he was one of the best read men who ever lived. This was a man who knew Plato and Homer back to front in the original Greek, who'd read Dante in Italian and Virgil in Latin. Yet a man who lectured on Milton and John Donne and medieval French poetry, etc, also loved children's books. He said that Beatrix Potter made him "fall in love with Autumn," and that after reading her, he saw the Autumn in a completely new light.

She’s also a big part of the reason that lots of the Lake District still looks so lovely. She owned lots of it and gave it to the National Trust on her death.

Thanks for this - I must follow up on her.. a remarkable woman

Thanks, @Terpsichore. I love the story of the code.

That really surprises me about C. S. Lewis, @JaneyGee