The woman who has sparked all this interest was born in London, the daughter of wealthy and socially aspiring parents. Her parents tended to be overprotective and discouraged contact with other children. A younger brother, Bertram, was born when Beatrix was 6, and the two of them were educated at home by a succession of governesses. When Bertram was old enough, he went off to school, but Beatrix stayed at home, learning reading, writing, music and art.

The family summered in Scotland for the first 11 years of her life and later in England's Lake District. It was on these outings that young Beatrix fell in love with both nature and animals, and began sketching them.

While at the Lake District in the summer of 1882, the family became acquainted with a local vicar, Canon Harwicke Rawnsley, a man already concerned about the toll tourism and industry was taking on the area. He would go on to help found The National Trust, an organization designed to preserve and protect land and buildings of importance. Potter would become involved with their work in her later years.

When Potter finished her school work, her parents appointed her their housekeeper and discouraged further intellectual studies — but she was not content to be just a domestic servant. She began studying lichens and fungi, and began painting images of them. Because she was female, she was not allowed to become a student at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. In 1897, she wrote a paper on the germination of spores that was presented to the Linnean Society by her uncle, as females were also banned from those meetings.

Potter had always kept a number of pets, including rabbits she named Benjamin Bouncer and Peter Piper, and a hedgehog named Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. They became the basis for not only a series of drawing but also her stories.

In 1893, she wrote a story of a naughty rabbit named Peter that she sent as a picture letter to the 5-year-old son of a former governess. She later decided to write it as a book for children, but it was rejected by a number of publishers. She printed a version herself, and in 1902, Frederick Warne & Co. agreed to publish it. The book was an instant hit, and more soon followed.

Most of her dealing with the publisher were with the family's youngest son, Norman, and the two became friends. When Norman asked her to marry him, she accepted, even though her parents did not approve of her marrying someone in "trade."

The wedding never took place, however. Soon after the engagement Norman became ill and died of pernicious anemia.

In her grief, Potter decided to move from London. She took some of the money she was earning from her books and bought Hill Top Farm, in the village of Sawrey in the Lake District.

Over the following decades, Potter added to her land holdings in the area, in order to save it from development and preserve its natural beauty. In this cause, she worked with a local solicitor named William Heelis, who shared her interest in conservation. The two were married in 1913.

Many of her later stories were set in this area. She also devoted herself to farming and the breeding of Herdwick sheep, a rare breed indigenous to the area.

When Beatrix Potter Heelis died in 1943, she bequeathed some 4,000 acres — and her herd of sheep — to the National Trust.

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