The Tale of Benjamin Bunny is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. The book is a sequel to The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), and tells of Peter's return to Mr. McGregor's garden with his cousin Benjamin to retrieve the clothes he lost there during his previous adventure. In Benjamin Bunny, Potter deepened the rabbit universe she created in Peter Rabbit, and, in doing so, suggested the rabbit world was parallel to the human world but complete and sufficient unto itself.
In 1903, Potter and her publisher decided her next book should be less complicated than her previous productions, and in Benjamin Bunny she created a simple, didactic tale for young children. The book's masterful illustrations were based upon the several gardens at the Lake District estate of Fawe Park, where Potter spent the summer of 1903. She was sensitive to the openings and endings of her books, and insisted Benjamin Bunny finish with the words "rabbit-tobacco", a term she appropriated from the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, one of her literary heroes.
Benjamin Bunny was an instant commercial and popular success, and thousands of copies were in print by the end of 1904. The Times Literary Supplement thought Potter's illustrations "pencil perfect",[1] but suggested that she engage a literary assistant for future productions. Potter created a nursery wallpaper tapping Benjamin's image, and Benjamin returned as an adult rabbit in the Flopsy Bunnies and Mr. Tod. In 1992, Benjamin Bunny was adapted as an episode of the BBC animated television series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends.
Helen Beatrix Potter (/ˈbiːətrɪks/,[1] 28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Born into an upper-middle-class household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets and spent holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted.
Potter's study and watercolours of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology. In her thirties, Potter self-published the highly successful children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Following this, Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full-time.
Potter wrote thirty books, the best known being her twenty-three children's tales. With the proceeds from the books and a legacy from an aunt, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in 1905; this is a village in the Lake District in the historic county of Lancashire. Over the following decades, she purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape. In 1913, at the age of 47, she married William Heelis, a respected local solicitor from Hawkshead. Potter was also a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation. She continued to write and illustrate, and to design spin-off merchandise based on her children's books for British publisher Warne until the duties of land management and her diminishing eyesight made it difficult to continue.