It took Linder 13 years to decode it, offering valuable new insight into the author beyond her charming animal stories.
Her cousin, Stephanie Duke, found the manuscript in Potter’s home in 1952, and turned to Leslie Linder, a scholar and a major collector of the author’s drawings, manuscripts, letters, and other ephemera, to read them, as they were written in code. Scholars have also learned a great deal about Potter’s personality from her journals, which she kept for 15 years, starting from age 14. Photo ©Victoria & Albert Museum, London, courtesy Frederick Warne and Co Ltd. Rupert Potter, Beatrix Potter, aged 15, with her dog, Spot (ca. But she finishes off mid-sentence, as if she forgot to finish her homework.” “There is a page of caterpillars, and on the other side, she wrote notes about where they lived and what sort of things they ate and what they looked. “She was already drawing scenes from nature, with flowers and landscapes, almost as part of homeschooling,” Bilclough said.
This passion is reflected even in her earliest artworks, a series of sketchbooks done when Potter was eight, nine, and 10 years old.
Though Potter lived until London until she was in her 40s, she grew up in a family that had a deep-seated interest in the natural world, fueling her interest in plants, animals, and the landscape.
(For a time, Potter studied to be a mycologist.) The show, which is accompanied by a gorgeously illustrated monograph published by Rizzoli, features 200 artworks, manuscripts, photographs, and other artifacts, including little-known scientific drawings. Photo ©Victoria & Albert Museum, London, courtesy of Frederick Warne and Co. Beatrix Potter, scientific drawings of a ground beetle (ca.