This is a fascinating interesting read. This book is exceptionally well written.
Well worth a read for fans of Beatrix potter.
A great book.

The Real Beatrix Potter

By: Nadia Cohen

Pen and Sword

Pen and Sword History

History, Nonfiction (Adult)

Publish Date April 30, 2020

#TheRealBeatrixPotter #NetGalley

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I am so glad that net galley gave me the opportunity to review this book. I did miss the download time frame but I still wanted to review it so I bought the book.

This was a good book. I learned a lot this beloved children's author that I didn't know. This book tells you about the life of Beatrix which is actually her middle name. She was a very lonely child even though she had a younger brother. She spent most of her youth in the family nursery with governesses.

She was different and her parents had a hard time understanding her. Even though she was brought up wealthy she didn't act like it and hated socializing. She had an interesting life and in the end left a legacy for us all besides her books.

She was a private person and loved the open country and learning new things. I gave this book 4 stars and recommend that you read this book to learn more about her.

"I see no reason why common sense should not foster a healthier appreciation of beauty than morbid sentimentality."

"I just made stories to please myself, because I never grew up."

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This biography tells the story of a rather privileged English girl's young life that was marred by boredom and inattention from her parents. Beatrix's imagination grew out of her circumstances, she was fascinated with the world and sought to learn about it in every way she could much to the chagrin of the society of the time. 

She was a miniature biologist and her observations of flora and fauna as a child helped to inform the beloved characters of the stories we all know and love. I was surprised to hear about her forays into science and how she was turned away from contributing what would have been valuable scientific info simply because she was a woman without formal education.

Her penchant for journaling throughout her life left a rich set of notes so those of us reading about her later could truly get a sense of what was ticking through her mind. I'm absolutely amazed that she wrote such hopeful children's stories when she clearly was a frequently depressed person. She's exactly the type of person I find absolutely fascinating, curious and with a lust for learning that seemed infectious and yet wholly practical and shrewd in her desire for success. I love that she went from paying to be published in a small run to being inundated with fanmail and success. Her legacy that continues through The National Trust is just remarkable. She was a woman well beyond her time!

A wonderful intimate look at Beatrix pPotters life.As a fan of hers I really enjoyed entering her real life story.Will be recommending this biography.#netgalley#penn&sword

I loved reading Beatrix Potter book as a child and found reading about her own life fascinating. This book is engaging and describes her life so well that you feel you are there with her. Some sentences seem repeated as if a final edit needs to take place. Thank you to Netgalley for the early e book copy and I look forward to purchasing the printed copy up one release.

Beatrix Potter's name is synonymous with the tales she wrote about Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and many more. The characters she created are well-known around the world, but the author herself is more of a mystery. This book sets out to reveal the real Beatrix Potter.

I absolutely loved reading this. It's written in a very accessible style but has so much information and detail about the author and the inspiration for her creations. It seems she was a very intelligent and formidable woman, and it was fascinating to learn about her being so much more than the author we know. Personally I had little idea about her involvement with the National Trust and her work with the farming communities of the Lake District. I definitely recommend this to any fan of Beatrix Potter wanting to learn more.

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers, Pen & Sword, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

This was an extremely interesting look into the life of Beatrix Potter. I've always loved the books and have recently bought the entire collection- just as a reminder of childhood. The film sparked my fascination with the life of the author and I found this book delved deep into her life. As with many children at the same time - she led a very sheltered life. But Beatrix was a very curious child who wanted to know more about the world she lived in and felt oppressed by a woman's place in this world.
She was very ahead of her time and longed to lead a more independent life- but as an unmarried girl was very much controlled by her parents well into adulthood. She kept an assortment of wild animals in her room that she studied carefully and were the inspiration for her early work. She wrote stories for friends childrens and eventually tried to get them published.
You read about the difficulties of a woman trying to break into the publishing world against her parents wishes.
She really was a woman ahead of her time. She had plenty of heartache- but also found great happiness in a more simple life when she broke away from her parents.
She was part of the great success that is the National Trust and showed a great understanding of the need to preserve places of great beauty- even though she initially bought her home in the Lake District as a holiday home.
I learnt a lot about her life and respect for her drive and the way that she forged a life for herself by working very hard.
I must buy a paper copy of this book for my collection.

Having grown up reading Beatrix Potter's works (my favourites being Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Mr. Jeremy Fisher) I was quite excited when I saw a book about the author of all my beloved childhood tales. I have to admit, I hadn't given too much thought about the author when I was young but picking up this book I was excited to learn more about Beatrix's life.

I loved hearing about her early life and especially watching her curiousity and interest in the natural world develop. She seemed like an incredibly interesting child, whose perseverance and strong-will helped her to not only become a successful author and illustrator but an important figure in her community. I found this story to be incredibly inspirational and I was really fascinated reading about all of Potter's successes. I believe these books helped me to respect and love her works even more.

I did find my mind wandering at some points in the book, having them be slow or repetitive. It is certainly not the most bland non-fiction I've read, but I would have enjoyed a bit more "storytelling' rather than a study or article style writing. Overall though I don't think this detracted too much from the main enjoyment of the story. It was nice to just sit and read a bit of this over a longer time period rather than binge read it all in a day or two.

I will definitely be suggesting this book to my mom when it comes out, because she was the one that introduced me and my sister to Beatrix Potter and brought her books into our lives as children.

I think I would give this book a 3.5 stars if I was able to do 1/2 stars.

This book was a delightful introduction to the life of Beatrix Potter, creator of beloved characters including Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck, and Benjamin Button.

It starts by discussing her lonely childhood and lack of formal education -- her parents didn't think it was worth it to educate a girl since her only job was to marry wealthy -- and then explains how she started inventing her characters, which started with Peter Rabbit, which she initially self-published. It also spends a lot of time on her passion for nature and conservation, and her important contribution to the National Trust, which is still evident today.

Beatrix Potter was a lot more than a children's book author and illustrator, and she made important contributions to her larger community for her entire life, and this book explores this in a way that doesn't drag on like some nonfiction books do. I've always enjoyed reading Beatrix Potter's books to my children, but I never really knew much about her and appreciated this opportunity to learn more.

While it was repetitive at times and could have used more photos, it was a very enjoyable and interesting read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.

The lives of female writers from the past often fascinate me. This also goes for Beatrix Potter. I cannot but love a good biography about someone whose work I grew up with!

This is a new biography of Potter. Coming on the heels of Linda Lear's exhaustive biography, I don't think it offers anything new, although I seem not to remember so much material about Canon Hardwick D. Rawnsley, who awakened Beatrix's interest in saving the Lake Country.

Beatrix Potter was born into the wealthy household of Rupert and Helen Potter (a lawyer and amateur photographer, and a heiress) to a stifling life of her parents' social ambitions. She wasn't allowed to have friends, so she turned to art, including highly detailed botanical sketches of fungi, and the clever drawings of small animals in letters to friends' children that became the basis for her "little books," the charming small volumes that became classics. Her first romance ended in tragedy; her second left her a happy, contented farmwife who preserved great tracts of land from developers.

Well told by Cohen. Contains an album of photographs of Potter, her homes, and land.

This is a fascinating read of one of our most beloved author's . i enjoyed this book for its insights into her charcter, her independence and how she self educated herself during a repressed time for women.. The author covers her environmental advocacy, her purchase of the property in England to save for generations and how she fought the confines of a Victorian upbringing to become the formidable independent educated women she was. She was a great believer of creativity and solitude in nature that teaches the reader a appreciation of her great love of nature. i enjoyed this book so much. Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity. Review cross posted.

I highly recommend this book for all who adore and follow the life of one of history's most remarkable women.

I enjoyed this well written and well researched biography of a very talented lady. I was a huge Beatrix Potter fan growing up (weren't we all?) and I was fascinated by this insight into her life.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

Nadia Cohen's The Real Beatrix Potter is an informative and enjoyable biographical account of the life of one of the most loved children's authors of all time. Cohen carefully examines the struggles, heartaches, and triumphs B.P. experienced during her long life. Along with learning much about the subject's life, readers are also granted an understanding look into what life in Victorian England and the Industrial Revolution was like for some women, a look at the publishing industry during the time period, the formation of the National Trust, and the various aspects of farming that surrounded Beatrix Potter's later years interests.

At times, the information was repetitive, going so far as having a word for word repetitive statements throughout the book. This and the random jumping in the timeline of Potter's book publications made the book a bit difficult to follow without backtracking or wondering if I had lost my place in the book. This didn't completely turn me off from the book, and I would recommend this book to a variety of readers. From students to historians, readers with interest in literary figures, and just general readers interested in finding out more about a beloved author from our childhoods. 3.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a DRC of this work in exchange for my honest review.

As many did; I grew up with Beatrix Potter books. The simplicity and magic inside every page was wonderful.
Having the opportunity to read more about Beatrix Potter has left me awe inspired. This is one incredibly talented woman who overcame many obstacles.

Pick up this book and read it.

I never really wondered about Beatrix Potter, I knew she wrote and illustrated books such as Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddleduck, but never gave the author a thought.

However, this book was fascinating - covering the unhappy childhood of an extremely bright Beatrix, her relationship with her controlling parents, her difficult personal life and her final freedom in the Lake District. The philanthropic Potter was a huge supporter and contributed to the newly-formed National Trust and, whilst she didn't believe in suffrage and would never have considered herself a feminist, she certainly shunned the conventional life expected of her, instead becoming a famous author and a business woman.

The book lost a star because I found the writing disjointed - the topic would jump around and, often, did not flow. I also regularly had the feeling of deja vu where a subject or line was repeated, often in the very next paragraph, almost as if parts had been copied and pasted without a proper edit.

All in all, well worth the read to learn about the life of Beatrix Potter.

I received this book and downloaded it to my Kindle. However, it did not properly download. Once I discovered that it had not downloaded I went back to download it, but it had already been archived. I have to give it a star rating, so at this time I will give it a 1 star. Once I have read the book I will come back and revise my review. Sorry.

3.5 stars

I found this account of Beatrix Potter's life to be very dry, almost like a profile written for newspaper or magazine copy. Disappointingly as well for a celebrated author with so much of her work and even her words still surviving in the present day, I felt that Cohen repeated and recycled a lot of material unnecessarily. Many quotes and passages are dredged up again and again which over time becomes distracting. The story of Beatrix Potter is still an inspiring one of a tenacious if shy woman who changed the course of history with her talent in an era when women were not encouraged to do so. We have her to thank not just for the whimsical creations for children, but also for her conservation efforts in the Lake District and generous donations to the National Trust. I thought that this was a fair if occasionally clunky tribute to Mrs. Potter's life.

If not for those little white books with stories of endearing watercolored animals that seem to act and talk like humans , many parts of the UK might not be as pristine as it actually is today. I found this out while reading the Real Beatrix Potter.

What an intriguing story about the woman who penned such magical stories that intrigued both children and adults alike throughout the world and still does so! Coming out from under the thumbs of domineering parents, Ms Potter made an impact on the English countryside to an extent that many may not know about.

I found some portions of the book a bit repetitive, but other than that I thoroughly enjoyed this biography. Being such a private person right to the end, her journals (some of them written in secret code!) helped contribute to the story encapsulated in The Real Beatrix Potter. It was wonderful reading about the unconventional woman behind the books.

Thank you Netgalley and Pen and Sword for this ARC. This is my honest review.

The Real Beatrix Potter is an absolutely fascinating read. I loved learning more about this remarkable woman. I highly recommend this great book.