Beatrix Potter

Writer / Illustrator

Name at birth: Helen Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter was the author and illustrator of a popular series of children's books that includes The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), The Tailor of Gloucester (1903) and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909). Illustrated with watercolors, her simple and unsentimental stories for children involved the adventures of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, the hedgehog Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and others. Between the 1890s and 1920s she published more than a dozen books that sold millions of copies. She bought farmland and cared for her aging parents until she was in her late 40s, then she married and devoted her time to breeding sheep and fighting for land conservation.

Extra credit: From the age of fifteen until she was past 30, Potter kept a journal written in a secret code, a code not broken until nearly 20 years after her death... For more than ten years Potter worked on scientifically accurate paintings of various types of fungi.

Other illustrators of books for children include Allen Say, Eric Carle and Maurice Sendak.