Beatrix Potter's Letters

Name: Beatrix Potter's Letters
Author: Judy Taylor
ISBN: 0723268843

by Judy Taylor

The letters cover every part of her life, really. Judy Taylor has annotated the collection so, where it’s not obvious what a letter is about or to whom it’s written, there is an explanatory note. Judy wrote a number of other books about Beatrix Potter, including her biography, and she became the ‘go-to’ expert for every aspect of Beatrix Potter’s life. This particular edition of her letters goes all the way from one or two surviving letters written when she was a child—you know, ‘Dear Papa, how is the dog?’ (or whatever)—through to some written a few days before she died in 1943. There are letters to fans, to family, to friends and to publishers. Later on, there are letters to farming acquaintances and to the National Trust. There are also letters to American visitors and to children, some of whom she knew and who were the lucky recipients of picture letters, and to children who had written fan mail to her, some of whom she corresponded with for a number of years. Many of the most interesting letters are where she’s just an ordinary person writing to a friend, when she’s not an author or a farmer or a celebrity. She’s just Beatrix Potter or, as she became, Beatrix Heelis. They remind us that Beatrix Potter was really just like you and me. She was an ordinary person who happened to do some extraordinary things in her life, and the letters run parallel to the biography and to the art, filling out the character and personality of this extraordinary woman. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I think, to a modern generation, the idea that one person should have written thousands of letters in a life that spanned 77 years is just unthinkable. We’ve probably all written thousands of emails, but that’s not the same and they’re not preserved in the same way. It is astonishing that it is possible to read somebody’s life through the letters that they wrote, and there are hundreds of letters that aren’t published at all, despite another book edited by Taylor, Letters to Children , and a volume of letters to Beatrix Potter’s Americans , selected and edited by Jane Crowell Morse. The American side of Potter’s fan base is a very interesting story, resulting partly from America having a very strong tradition of libraries. They had an importance there that they didn’t quite have here. They were the prime introduction to reading and literature for many children and families, and librarians held a rather more respected position there than they tended to enjoy in Britain. It was actually librarians who were the first Americans to visit her in England, and that started in the 1920s. Having guarded her privacy very closely, she was persuaded by her publisher to accept a visit from an American librarian and was surprised to discover a woman of great intelligence and culture, who really appreciated her work for its literary and artistic merits. This was the respected New York librarian, Anne Carroll Moore, who introduced others. In Britain, Potter felt her books were treated rather like toys by the booksellers, whereas the Americans, she gradually discovered, regarded her with much more respect and really appreciated the literary qualities of her books. She was flattered, of course. But there is a very interesting parallel to be drawn between Potter—a nonconformist, independent and, as it turned out, freethinking woman in a still quite a repressed English society—with these educated American women from the East Coast, whose ancestors had gone over on the Mayflower and were founding fathers. They were feisty, intelligent and opinionated and she found she could interact on equal terms with them, whereas here in England, class got in the way. You were an employer or an employee. You were well-bred, or not. None of that intruded with the Americans, so her letters to her American visitors are in many ways very open, and very interesting about England and the war and politics. Fascinating. In New York and in Philadelphia—it’s probably the same in Chicago—you have the central library, but the libraries elsewhere in the city are part of the same organization. In the UK, our libraries tend to be more independent from each other. But a library in a suburb of New York is still linked to the New York Public Library and it’s the same with the Free Library of Philadelphia. I think it’s still the case now that libraries are more important in America than they are here. An extraordinary percentage of the Beatrix Potter Society members in America—it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary this year—are actually librarians or in some way connected with librarianship, perhaps where it overlaps with primary education. “In Britain Potter felt her books were treated rather like toys by the booksellers, whereas the Americans…regarded her with much more respect and really appreciated the literary qualities of her books” This digression illustrates a point about the letters, actually, which is that if you’re reading what somebody has written about their life in this way, it sends you off in lots of different directions beyond their life and work. They act as a social-history springboard into all sorts of other areas that you wouldn’t necessarily have thought about, but which can be very interesting. Our emails will vanish and disappear. What we’re left with is what is said on websites and so on, and that won’t necessarily be from a primary source. It’s a pity.

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Libby Joy

"The letters cover every part of her life, really. Judy Taylor has annotated the collection so, where it’s not obvious what a letter is about or to whom it’s written, there is an explanatory note. Judy wrote a number of other books about Beatrix Potter, including her biography, and she became the ‘go-to’ expert for every aspect of Beatrix Potter’s life. This particular edition of her letters goes all the way from one or two surviving letters written when she was a child—you know, ‘Dear Papa, how is the dog?’ (or whatever)—through to some written a few days before she died in 1943. There are letters to fans, to family, to friends and to publishers. Later on, there are letters to farming acquaintances and to the National Trust. There are also letters to American visitors and to children, some of whom she knew and who were the lucky recipients of picture letters, and to children who had written fan mail to her, some of whom she corresponded with for a number of years. Many of the most interesting letters are where she’s just an ordinary person writing to a friend, when she’s not an author or a farmer or a celebrity. She’s just Beatrix Potter or, as she became, Beatrix Heelis. They remind us that Beatrix Potter was really just like you and me. She was an ordinary person who happened to do some extraordinary things in her life, and the letters run parallel to the biography and to the art, filling out the character and personality of this extraordinary woman. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I think, to a modern generation, the idea that one person should have written thousands of letters in a life that spanned 77 years is just unthinkable. We’ve probably all written thousands of emails, but that’s not the same and they’re not preserved in the same way. It is astonishing that it is possible to read somebody’s life through the letters that they wrote, and there are hundreds of letters that aren’t published at all, despite another book edited by Taylor, Letters to Children , and a volume of letters to Beatrix Potter’s Americans , selected and edited by Jane Crowell Morse. The American side of Potter’s fan base is a very interesting story, resulting partly from America having a very strong tradition of libraries. They had an importance there that they didn’t quite have here. They were the prime introduction to reading and literature for many children and families, and librarians held a rather more respected position there than they tended to enjoy in Britain. It was actually librarians who were the first Americans to visit her in England, and that started in the 1920s. Having guarded her privacy very closely, she was persuaded by her publisher to accept a visit from an American librarian and was surprised to discover a woman of great intelligence and culture, who really appreciated her work for its literary and artistic merits. This was the respected New York librarian, Anne Carroll Moore, who introduced others. In Britain, Potter felt her books were treated rather like toys by the booksellers, whereas the Americans, she gradually discovered, regarded her with much more respect and really appreciated the literary qualities of her books. She was flattered, of course. But there is a very interesting parallel to be drawn between Potter—a nonconformist, independent and, as it turned out, freethinking woman in a still quite a repressed English society—with these educated American women from the East Coast, whose ancestors had gone over on the Mayflower and were founding fathers. They were feisty, intelligent and opinionated and she found she could interact on equal terms with them, whereas here in England, class got in the way. You were an employer or an employee. You were well-bred, or not. None of that intruded with the Americans, so her letters to her American visitors are in many ways very open, and very interesting about England and the war and politics. Fascinating. In New York and in Philadelphia—it’s probably the same in Chicago—you have the central library, but the libraries elsewhere in the city are part of the same organization. In the UK, our libraries tend to be more independent from each other. But a library in a suburb of New York is still linked to the New York Public Library and it’s the same with the Free Library of Philadelphia. I think it’s still the case now that libraries are more important in America than they are here. An extraordinary percentage of the Beatrix Potter Society members in America—it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary this year—are actually librarians or in some way connected with librarianship, perhaps where it overlaps with primary education. “In Britain Potter felt her books were treated rather like toys by the booksellers, whereas the Americans…regarded her with much more respect and really appreciated the literary qualities of her books” This digression illustrates a point about the letters, actually, which is that if you’re reading what somebody has written about their life in this way, it sends you off in lots of different directions beyond their life and work. They act as a social-history springboard into all sorts of other areas that you wouldn’t necessarily have thought about, but which can be very interesting. Our emails will vanish and disappear. What we’re left with is what is said on websites and so on, and that won’t necessarily be from a primary source. It’s a pity."

Beatrix Potter · fivebooks.com