Description
Fine dust jacket, picturing Beatrix Potter portrait, lettering in grey and black. Fine binding of grey cloth over boards with gilt stamping on the spine. Binding is tight and pages are clean. The “1” is present on the number line on copyright page which is the designation of first edition of this completely revised and reset edition 1989. Lovely pictorial frontispiece of Beatrix Potter. New forward by Judy Taylor. Dust Jacket marbled paper design: Cockerell Marbled Papers, Cambridge.
About the book:
Between the ages of 15 and 30 Beatrix Potter kept a code-written journal. These were the hidden years of her life, and they were to remain in obscurity until in 1958 Leslie Linder eventually cracked the code and presented to the world this fascinating account of upper middle-class life in late Victorian times. The journal reveals Beatrix Potter’s surprising awareness of current events, her shrewd judgement of human character, her appreciation of natural history and art and her keen sense of humor.
In this new edition the text has been completely revised and corrected in the light of information gained in recent years. Material which Leslie Linder omitted because it was obscure or because he felt it to be unimportant has now been re-transcribed and restored. A new foreword by Judy Taylor gives the background to Leslie Linder’s work. The color section contains some of Beatrix Potter’s best and most interesting work of the period as well as photographs of people and places mentioned.
The Journal provides a fascinating insight into the early adult life of a remarkable woman who was to become one of the most famous children’s writers of all time, and its sharp wit and observation are a delight to the reader.
Leslie Linder was an engineer by profession who conceived a passionate interest in the life and work of Beatrix Potter after reading Margaret Lane’s biography which was published in 1946. It is to his persistence and dedication that we owe much of our knowledge of Beatrix Potter’s work, for in addition to decoding the Journal he amassed an enormous collection of her drawings and paintings and wrote two of the definitive books on her work–A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter and The Art of Beatrix Potter. At his death in 1974 he left most of his superb collection to the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum-an invaluable legacy to all those who know and love Beatrix Potter’s work.
