Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, mycologist, and conservationist who is best known for her children's books, which featured animal characters such as Peter Rabbit. In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit and became secretly engaged to her publisher, Norman Warne, causing a breach with her parents, who disapproved of his social status. Warne died before the wedding.

This brand new story has lots of fun flaps for little hands to lift as they explore Peter's house and help him to find his toy bunny. With a gentle narrative and cosy burrow setting, this is the perfect tale to help little ones wind down before bedtime. An astute and pioneering businesswoman, Beatrix was entirely involved with every facet of her books’ production and had almost endless ideas for toys and games to accompany them. She even came up with a prototype doll for Peter Rabbit and designed her own wallpaper.To earn some money, Beatrix and Bertram successfully designed and sold their own greeting’s cards which Beatrix illustrated with the animal designs that were to become her trademark. However, the character destined to become her most famous creation came out of a little storybook she sent (accompanying one of her many ‘picture letters’) to entertain the children of her former governess, Annie Moore in 1893. Painfully shy, Beatrix was not a natural socialite, despite the urging of her family who were keen to see her married and settled. The Potters were wealthy and moved in elite circles; the young Beatrix was teased by John Everett Millais and attended parties frequented by some of the most notable literary and artistic figures of the day, including Oscar Wilde. It was these early sketches that were to become the seeds of inspiration for her best-loved stories.

Born in 1866, Beatrix Potter spent most of her early life in London. Her father was a barrister by profession but was also an excellent amateur photographer. He made sure the young Beatrix and her younger brother Bertram received private painting tuition alongside their other lessons. Beatrix loved to read; in particular fairy tales. Two of her childhood favourites were Alice in Wonderland (she poured over John Tenniel’s illustrations and even tried her hand at her own) and the nonsense verse of Edward Lear. Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866. During her rather lonely childhood and later, as a young woman, she studied art and natural history. She acquired her love and knowledge of the countryside during family holidays, at first in Scotland and then in the Lake District. She started her career as children's author and illustrator in 1901 when she was thirty-five. In the years before the First World War, demand for her work was so great that she was publishing an average of two new stories a year. As she became financially independent, she was able to buy some land in the Lake District and in 1913, on her marriage to solicitor William Heelis, she moved to live there permanently. For the last thirty years of her life, writing and illustrating gave place to a second career as a sheep farmer and countryside conservationist. The family were passionate about the natural world, taking regular holidays in Scotland and the Lake District where the whole family would go out armed with sketchbooks to capture the world around them. The two Potter children also kept a variety of pets in the schoolroom including Peter the rabbit, a canary, a budgerigar and a frog called Punch. When Bertram went away to school he remembered to leave her with plenty of friends to entertain her, including gifting her a pair of unusual long-eared bats.Peter Rabbit and his sisters have had a fun day playing outside, and now it's time to go to sleep. But as everyone gets ready to say goodnight, Peter realises he's missing something very important - his snuggly toy bunny has disappeared! It took a further seven years for Beatrix’s story to reach print but finally, after much amendment, Warne’s publishers agreed to produce a modest print-run of her ‘little book’ (as Beatrix always referred to it) about a certain Mr Peter Rabbit.

A talented amateur mycologist, a modern day Beatrix Potter might well have gone on to pursue a career in botany or natural sciences. The early 19th century offered her no such options. At 25, Beatrix was by any ordinary measure of the time, a failure. She was unmarried, with no prospect of being so, still in the nursery where she remained well into adulthood - a decided spinster. Born into a wealthy household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets, and through holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developed a love of landscape, flora, and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted. Because she was a woman, her parents discouraged intellectual development, but her study and paintings of fungi led her to be widely respected in the field of mycology.