Beatrix Potter's Letters

by Beatrix Potter, Judy Taylor

Overview

Beatrix Potter was a very private person, yet, luckily for us, she was a prolific letter writer. Through her own words to friends, working colleagues and children we can discover the observant, energetic, affectionate and humorous personality she kept hidden from her public. Her life covers a period of immense social change. The restricted existence of a dutiful Victorian daughter, the background against which she first wrote the story of Peter Rabbit, was very different from that of war-time England where she continued to pioneer countryside conservation until her death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780723268840
Publisher:	Penguin Random House Children's UK
Publication date:	04/26/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Judy Taylor's interest in Beatrix Potter goes back many years. She remembers The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle being read to her by her mother, and at the age of eight she discovered Beatrix Potter's Lake District for herself. Her connection with Beatrix Potter became a professional one when, in 1981, Frederick Warne asked her to act as their Beatrix Potter consultant. She has written many books on aspects of her life, and is her official biographer.

Editorial Reviews

From more than 1400 extant letters, Taylor has chosen 400 that range over the whole course of Potter's life. Drawings are reproduced on nearly every other page, the famous ``picture letters'' are printed in facsimile, and a few pages of color plates appear. Naturally, much of the correspondence concerns her books and their illustrations, and even a casual reader will be struck by her intense involvement in their publication. Politics, farm, and family business also enter the letters, bringing fascinating glimpses of war and social change even in the countryside. Potter's love of nature is everywhere apparent, but on other aspects of her emotional life the letters are mostly silent. Taylor's linking annotations make this book a satisfying complement to her Beatrix Potter (Warne, 1986) and to the reissue of The Journal of Beatrix Potter (Viking, 1990), revised to include some material (jokes and comments about church affairs) omitted from the 1966 edition.-- Patricia Dooley, Univ. of Washington Lib. Sch., Seattle

Library Journal