Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) was an English writer and illustrator who grew up in a wealthy, secluded London household and taught herself to draw by studying animals, fungi and fossils; her mushroom watercolors were presented to the Linnean Society. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, begun as a letter to a sick child, was printed privately in 1901 and taken up by Frederick Warne in 1902, and twenty-two more little books followed, among them Benjamin Bunny, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Squirrel Nutkin and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. With the proceeds she bought Hill Top farm in the Lake District, became a breeder of Herdwick sheep and left four thousand acres to the National Trust.