Beatrix Potter Society
New Notecard!
The ‘Learn to read’ card is a new Beatrix Potter notecard to send to your friends and family and support The Beatrix Potter Society. Society Members can gain a 20% discount! (until 1st October 2022)
Every purchase you make at our online shop helps The Beatrix Potter Society.
We do send worldwide!
Video of our Zoom event on Beatrix Potter’s 155th Birthday on July 28 2021
Did you miss our special Zoom event? Luckily it was recorded. You can see the whole video to learn more about the book Beatrix Potter, Scientist by Lindsay H. Metcalf. Want to know more about Beatrix Potter but you are not yet a member? Join us and learn all about Beatrix Potter
Festive Gathering 2020 Quiz
Festive Beatrix Potter Society Quiz
Are you a Beatrix Potter expert?
For those who were not able to join our online Festive Quiz on 21 November, you can have a go as here are the questions. Enjoy!
Members of The Beatrix Potter Society will find the answers in the Members Only section. Do you want to know the answers but you are not yet a member, join us!
A Day at the Victoria & Albert Museum
Our annual AGM and Linder Lecture was held at the V&A. We were thrilled to have our Patron, Dame Patricia Routledge, D.B.E. attend. Annemarie Bilclough, Frederick Warne Curator of Illustration for the V&A presented the Linder Lecture and had many original Beatrix Potter illustrations for us to view.
If you would like to see the Linder Lecture and more interviews go to the Member’s Page. If you are not yet a member join now for access to the member’s section where you will find videos of last years conference, AGM 2019 with the Linder Lecture and interviews with members and some of our committee.
Here is an overview of the day.
BEATRIX POTTER A Lasting Legacy
Beatrix Potter Studies XVII Is Now Available
The Seventeenth Beatrix Potter Society International Conference coincided with the 150th anniversary of Beatrix’s birth and celebrated her legacy. This new addition to the Studies series publishes the talks given at that Conference.
For more details including Members special offer please go to our Books and Merchandise page or go straight to the Shop.
Pottering About- E News
Want to keep up to date with what is going on in the Beatrix Potter world? Sign up for our free e-news, “Pottering About”, an electronic newsletter. Click the Sign Up button to be added to our mailing list.
Beatrix Potter, c.1895
Roslind Moscrop’s Recent Bequest to The Beatrix Potter Society
The bequest has the inscribed copy of The Fairy Caravan: ‘For Joe Moscrop in remembrance of Troutbeck Park and the sheep. With kind regards from the author Beatrix Heelis. May 30th 1930’.
In 1929, The Fairy Caravan was published only in America, but a hundred copies were produced in the UK for copyright purposes and Beatrix distributed them to her friends and – in particular – to local farmers and shepherds.
Joe Moscrop’s copy is number 29; it also contains the frontispiece (the sketches for which are shown on the cover of the October J&N) about which Beatrix wrote: ‘This drawing and several others are not in the American edition. The first chapter was reprinted at Ambleside, for “copyrighting” purposes.’ This along with other correspondence is deposited with the National Trust in the Lake District.
Jemima Puddle-duck doll and two first edition little books
The Society is the proud owner of a charming but very old Jemima Puddle-duck doll and two first edition little books – The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher – and all are on long loan at the V&A . These were a generous donation from Member, Christine Hacklett, and were given to her family by Beatrix Potter herself. Christine’s great-aunt was Nurse Ellen Bond, who helped to care for Beatrix’s first governess, Miss Hammond, in her old age and the two women became friends. Jemima is now on long loan at the V&A, where you can make an appointment to see it by contacting Emma Laws (e.laws@vam.ac.uk) or Lizzie Jacklin (e.jacklin@vam.ac.uk).
The copy of The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher is inscribed ‘to Ellen J Bond from Beatrix Potter Oct 4th 1906 Sawrey Ambleside’, and the Jemima is one of the original dolls registered in 1910 and produced by a company called Farnell to Beatrix’s own design. In the same year she wrote to another little girl, ‘… I should like to send “Jemima” because I have taken a great deal of interest in getting her made. She is being made in hundreds at a toy factory at Acton Hill.’
Several other Jemima dolls have survived – among them one at Melford Hall (given to the Hyde Parker children by Beatrix) and another (which originally belonged to Tom Storey’s daughter, Freda) in the Beatrix Potter Collection of the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University. (See the ‘Places to Visit’ page of this website for more about Melford Hall and the Cotsen Collection. You can also read more about the Society’s acquisition in the January 2017 Journal and Newsletter, which featured Jemima on its cover.)
The background letter on the website
Visitors to The Beatrix Potter Society website might be intrigued by the background letter on each page. It is one of a group of eight letters – seven from Beatrix Heelis and one from William Heelis – written to George Walker, the manager of Troutbeck Park Farm from 1930 to 1945. They were bought by the Society at a Sotheby’s auction in May 1998 and are currently on long-loan to the V&A.(see above for making an appointment to view them)
Most of the letters, like this one written in 1942, relate to day-to-day farming matters – sale prices for cattle and sheep, wages for the men and the weather – but the collection also includes Beatrix’s initial approach to George Walker asking him to come and work for her. Her last letter to him was written on 20 November 1943, a few weeks before her death, and she says, ‘Don’t know when I will come, the wind makes me cough.’ Willie Heelis’s letter is also written a few weeks before his death – from a nursing home in York on 27 May 1945 – and encloses a cheque for the wages and enquires about the farm.
George Walker himself features several times in the letters written to Beatrix’s lambing shepherd, Joseph Moscrop, between 1926 and 1943 and published by the Society in 1998 as Beatrix Potter’s Farming Friendship.
