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Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

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Update 9/28/18: I am now an affiliate with Z Publishing House. I do get a small commission from any purchases through this link ( http://www.zpublishinghouse.com?rfsn=1831564.e6264) if anyone is interested in some anthologies of emerging writers.
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature by Linda Lear is an in depth biography on the famous children's author Beatrix Potter. Lear does an incredible job explaining the history of this amazing woman. Each chapter focuses on some aspect of Potter's life, starting with her family history and wealth from textile industries before even getting to her birth and childhood. 

A lot of this information was unknown to me. I didn't realize Potter was an amateur scientist before she was a children's author. I didn't know she was one of the first people to discover the symbiotic relationship between algae and fungus in what we know as lichen. I also didn't know she's the reason we know so much about fungus in general.After having a bad experience with the scientific community (she was a young woman during the Victorian era and science was a misogynistic elite group) she moved on to children's books. 

I started reading this in December and didn't finish until just a few days before the new Peter Rabbit movie was released. I was already skeptical about the movie, but after reading just how particular and protective of her work Potter was, I felt the movie was a complete injustice to the author. Potter was a perfectionist when it came to her work, to the point of bringing live specimons into her publisher's office in order to prove her illustrations were anatomically and color-wise correct. When she learned companies were trying to make merchandise based on her books, she was horrified at how terrible they looked and set out to make her own versions, taking great pains to match the colors exactly. To read about her dedication to her work and then see how it was portrayed in the new movie . . . it's just sickening (but I'm not a movie critic so my opinion on that isn't worth much).

Lear also goes into Potter's work in farming and preservation of the countryside, her involvement with breeding livestock for the fell farms where she lived, her accomplishments in the show rings, and all of the boards Potter worked on. Throughout the book are excerpts from letters between Potter and her friends, business partners, families, and fans, including some that were eventually turned into the childrens books we know and love. There are also images-- either illustrations done by Potter or photographs of her, her family, and her farms-- that make the information even more real to the readers.

This is a dense read full of in-depth information about one of the greatest children's authors. There were times when it felt like I was simply slogging through it just because i had to, but then there were times I couldn't put the book down and had to find someone to share it with. For anyone who loves Beatrix Potter's work, I'd recommend you read this. It'll just make you appreciate her work even more.

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