Back cover text:

The name of Beatrix Potter, author and illustator of the world-famous 'Peter Rabbit' books, is automatically associated with the English Lake District. It was, however, a different place that first inspired her imagination: the beautiful countryside of Highland Perthshire.

Spending every childhood summer for 11 years at Dalguise House near Dunkeld, Beatrix Potter fell deeply in love with Scotland. Memories of enchanted summer days and long adventurous rambles were a never-dwindling source of inspiration. And it was when she returned to Scotland as an adult that Peter Rabbit was born.

Beatrix Potter grew from a questioning, intelligent child into an energetic and talented woman during her visits to Scotland. She was passionately interested in natural history throughout her life, from childhood investigations into the anatomy and habits of all sorts of local wildlife, to mycology, conservation and farming in later life. Her Journal, written in a code only cracked 14 years after she died, reveals her fascination with the flora and fauna of Perthshire, and the people she met there.

Lynne McGeachie, a member of The Beatrix Potter Society for many years and translator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit into Scots, allows Beatrix Potter's voice to ring out in her own letters and diary entries. They tell the tale of one of the best-loved writers in Britain.

Reviews:

Concise, elegant and intriguing, this sliver of literary history shows, perhaps for the first time, the full extent of the place Scotland played in shaping the imagination of Beatrix Potter.  The Herald