Description
Fine dust jacket. The Fine binding is maroon cloth over boards with a gilt stamping on the spine. The binding is tight and pages are clean. Some of Beatrix Potter’s illustrations are also included in this book along with some reproductions of some of her hand written letters.
About the book:
“I have been asked again how Peter Rabbit came to be written. It seems a long time ago, and in another world.”
Beatrix Potter, author of one of the most famous children’s books ever, achieved considerable prominence in her own lifetime but, hating publicity, she was consistently reticent about her life and work, and self-deprecating about her talent. However, she was a prolific letter-writer, and 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.
From a collection of over 1,400 letters Judy Taylor has assembled a representative selection which documents every stage of Beatrix Potter’s life. The early period in the 1 890s, when Beatrix was a young woman living at home with her parents, presents an extraordinary juxtaposition of the enchanting and funny Picture-letters sent to entertain child friends with highly technical letters on the subject of fungi, a subject on which she was doing serious independent research Her mastery of both entertainment and technique came together in her children’s books, however, and it was from these that she made her career. The publishing process of the early books is revealed in the almost daily correspondence with her editor, Norman Warne, to whom she eventually became engaged to be married Norman Warne’s tragic death shortly after their engagement precipitated her move from London to the more congenial surroundings of the Lake District. She became, in her own phrase, ‘a woman tamarind we have H her joyful descriptions to friends of her new life, as well. as frequent2 acerbic communications with the local bureaucracy as she battled to preserve the countryside she loved.
Her life, from 1866 to 1943, covers a period of 1mmense social change. The restricted existence of a dutiful Victorian daughter, the background against which she first wrote the story of Peter Rabbit, was indeed ‘another world’ from that of war-time England where she continued to pioneer countryside conservation until her death. Judy Taylor’s selection of letters, linked by her informative annotations, gives us a fascinating view of the development of the early twentieth century as well as the life story of a truly remarkable woman.
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 when she was sent to a boarding school in that area during the war In 1951 she joined the Bodley Head publishing company where she specialized in children’s books, and for fifteen years she was their Children’s Books Editor, In 197 1 she was awarded the MBE, for services to children’s literature.
Judy Taylor’s connection with Beatrix Potter became a professional one when, in 1981, Frederick Warne asked her to act as their Beatrix Potter consultant. She devised the Beatrix Potter baby book, My First Year and has undertaken extensive research into the life and writings of Beatrix Potter. She is the author of Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller and Countrywoman, an illustrated biography, and That Naughty Rabbit, an account of the publishing history of Beatrix Potter’s most famous book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. In 1987 Judy Taylor was one of the selectors of the major exhibition of Beatrix Potter’s work held at the Tate Gallery, London, and the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, and she was a contributor to the book, Beatrix Potter 1866-1943, published as a companion to the exhibition.
Judy Taylor is herself the author of several books for children, and has recently become a publisher again. Married to writer and historian Richard Hough, she lives in Primrose Hill, London.
