Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

In this now classic biography, reissued in a new edition for the 150th anniversary of Beatrix Potter’s birth, Linda Lear offers the astonishing portrait of an extraordinary woman who gave us some of the most beloved children’s books of all time.

Potter found freedom from her conventional Victorian upbringing in the countryside. Nature inspired her imagination as an artist and scientific illustrator, but The Tale of Peter Rabbit brought her fame, financial success, and the promise of happiness when she fell in love with her editor Norman Warne. After his tragic and untimely death, Potter embraced a new life as the owner of Hill Top Farm in the English Lake District and a second chance at happiness. As a visionary landowner, successful farmer and sheep-breeder, she was able to preserve the landscape that had inspired her art.

Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature reveals a lively, independent, and passionate woman, whose art was timeless, and whose generosity left an indelible imprint on the countryside. This anniversary edition is complete with a brand new foreword by James Rebanks, the Lake District shepherd and social media sensation who chronicles his world on Twitter and in his wonderful book, ＂A Shepherd’s Life＂.

An environmental historian and biographer, Linda Lear is the author of the prize-winning study, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. A natural history enthusiast and a collector of botanical art, she and her husband tend gardens in Bethesda, MD and Charleston, SC.

James Rebanks is the author of The Shepherd’s Life. He is the Herdwick Shepherd, whose account of shepherding has a strong following on Twitter. His family have farmed in the same area for six hundred years.