24th August 2026

The World of Peter Rabbit (The Complete Tales) by Beatrix Potter

After a wonderful weekend visiting the Lake District (for the first time!) and taking a fantastic Beatrix Potter tour, I learned so much about this fascinating woman. As well as being a children’s author and artist, she was a scientist, a feminist, a down-to-earth farmer and an incredibly savvy businesswoman. So it feels prudent to review her stories this month.

Perhaps this is an odd, unwelcome detour to some. These books have been out for over a century in some cases and I would guess that a lot of us have read at least one or two of her stories at some point. Why bother reviewing them? Well, I bought this gorgeous collection at Beatrix’s home of Hill Top and after reading through it, I felt inspired. And this is my book review series so I’ll review what I want.

These stories are charming and full of not just nostalgia for the reader’s childhood, but for a time and a lifestyle that only exists in books like these. The illustrations are as beautiful as the landscape that inspired them and the characters are vibrant, if fairly simple, as children’s books often tend to be.

I have often heard these works referred to as ‘timeless’, and although I sincerely hope this is the case, I hesitate to use the word myself. The world had changed so much since Beatrix’s day. In modern times, I imagine there are very few children who know what a ‘patty-pan’ is (I had to look it up), or who can imagine spending an entire day climbing a hill looking for ‘three handkins and a pinny’ completely unsupervised. Nonetheless, there is something inherently appealing about these kinds of stories, particularly the almost carefree way of life, despite the hard labour and lack of wealth.

The stories also contain some interesting contradictions. We see the perspectives of most of the animals, from mice to foxes. But despite the cutesy ‘everyone lives in harmony’ idea we think of when we picture these stories, the society actually depicted feels a lot looser. The cats eat mouse pie, the pigs approve of the shop in town that doesn’t sell sausages, Mr Jackson tries to eat Babbitty Bumble before realising he doesn’t like bumblebees and instead pulls apart the nest, looking for honey. In this, we see that Beatrix Potter doesn’t shy away from the realities of life in a small farming community. There is no sugar-coating of the nature of the animals, or their purpose to humans. Meat comes from somewhere and animals eat each other, even sometimes the named characters of children’s books.

For me, this all adds to the world in a positive way. They really do feel like books written for specific children in Beatrix’s life, based on real pets that Beatrix had, and, similar to the way my own dad’s made-up stories at bedtime weren’t really set in a particular timeline, aspects of them seem to move around depending on the story being told.

Re-reading these little books, it is easy to understand how they have captivated children for generations, and I sincerely hope they will continue to do so for many generations to come.