There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.
Catalog
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter (British English , North American English also , 28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Born into a privileged household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets and spent holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora, and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted. Though Potter was typical of women of her generation in having limited opportunities for higher education, her study and watercolors of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology. In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children's book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full-time. With the proceeds from the books and a legacy from an aunt, in 1905 Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey, a village in the Lake District, which at that time was in Lancashire. Over the following decades, she purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape. In 1913, at the age of 47, she married William Heelis, a respected local solicitor from Hawkshead. Potter was also a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservatio
I feel much younger at thirty than I did at twenty; firmer and stronger both in mind and body.
Saw Oscar Wilde and his wife just going into the Fine Arts to see the Holman Hunt. He is not peculiar as far as I noticed, rather a fine looking gentleman, but inclined to stoutness. The lady was strangely dressed, but I did not know her in time to see well.
I don't want lessons, I want practice. I hope it is not pride that makes me so stiff against teaching, but a bad or indifferent teacher is worse than none.
This day last year, how time moves and what it brings! So cold and stormy, and yet such gleams of peace and light making the darkness stranger and more dreary. How will it end for me?
It is all the same, drawing, painting, modelling, the irresistible desire to copy any beautiful object which strikes the eye.
I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child.
What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense, to fear no longer the terror that flieth by night, yet to feel truly and understand a little, a very little, of the story of life.
All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife. . . . Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.
I was never sent to school...it would have rubbed off some of the originality (if I had not died of shyness or been killed with over pressure).
If I have done anything, even a little, to help small children enjoy honest, simple pleasures, I have done a bit of good.
Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.
Thank goodness my education was neglected.
Don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.
Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were – Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.