Beatrix Potter, Illustration from The Tale of Peter Rabbit, c. 1901, watercolor on paper, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Helen Beatrix Potter, the English author, illustrator, and natural scientist, was born on July 28, 1866 in London into a wealthy Unitarian family. As a child, she kept many small pets and had a collection of insects and butterflies that she frequently would draw. As a young woman, Potter became interested in the natural sciences and mycology (the study of fungi) in particular. She wrote a paper on her theory of hybridization that was never presented or published because of her gender. Mycologists still refer to her detailed drawings to identify fungi.
Potter published 23 books in her lifetime; the best known, of course, was The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She wrote and illustrated her first stories about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter to entertain the son of a former governess, Annie Carter Moore, who then encouraged Potter to get them published.
