Peter Rabbit

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

The Tale of Peter Rabbit, one of the most popular of the Beatrix Potter books, was the first of many to be published in the early 1900’s. The story was originally written for her friend Noel Moore in 1893, rewritten by Potter and then privately printed by her in 1901, after several publishers rejected the book, originally titled The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor’s Garden.  She signed a contract in 1902, and even before the publication in October of 1902, all of the first eight thousand books had been sold out.

Peter Rabbit’s book followed Peter, a mischievous and disobedient rabbit that liked to go into his neighbor’s garden.  A young rabbit, Peter’s mother has forbidden him and his sisters from entering Mr. McGregor’s garden, since that garden is where Peter’s father had been captured and turned into a pie.  While his mother is out running errands, the young rabbit cannot resist temptation and ventures off into the garden, filling his belly full with all of the wonderful vegetables that Mr. McGregor has growing there.  The rest of the book involves many close encounters with the gardener and Peter, finally ending with Peter safe at home feeling sick and his mother treating him to a cup of tea to settle his stomach.

As with all of the other Beatrix Potter books, The Tale of Peter Rabbit is written solely by Beatrix Potter and illustrated by her as well.  Throughout the printing of the publications, Beatrix was known to work very closely with the process, editing and adding punctuation as well as fine tuning some of the illustrations as well.  The animals were known to wear clothing and walk upright, looking similar to humans all while living in their own natural habitat.  This style of illustration became the norm for Beatrix Potter books after Peter Rabbit’s tale, as she tended to have the animals mixing with the humans, while the animals still maintained their animalistic instincts.  She created such wonderful color pictures with backgrounds that suggested perspective and differing viewpoints, making the reader see a story within the picture, even when there is only but a few words on the page.  Her attention to detail within those illustrations was called “scientifically correct”, with regard to the animals, due to them being images of anatomically correct representations of animals she had as pets and that she saw around her while she was growing up and writing her stories.