THE little Flopsy Bunnies slept delightfully in the warm sun. Before going to sleep he was sufficiently wide awake to put a paper bag over his head to keep off the flies. By degrees, one after another, they were overcome with slumber, and lay down in the mown grass.īenjamin was not so much overcome as his children. THE Flopsy Bunnies simply stuffed lettuces. One day-oh joy!-there were a quantity of overgrown lettuces, which had 'shot' into flower. (which always tasted oily), and some rotten vegetable marrows and an old boot or two. There were jam pots and paper bags, and mountains of chopped grass from the mowing machine WHEN this happened, the Flopsy Bunnies went across the field to a rubbish heap, in the ditch outside Mr. SOMETIMES Peter Rabbit had no cabbages to spare. I do not remember the separate names of their children they were generally called the 'Flopsy Bunnies.'ĪS there was not always quite enough to eat,- Benjamin used to borrow cabbages from Flopsy's brother, Peter Rabbit, who kept a nursery garden. They had a large family, and they were very improvident and cheerful.

WHEN Benjamin Bunny grew up, he married his Cousin Flopsy. They certainly had a very soporific effect upon the Flopsy Bunnies!

I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces but then I am not a rabbit. Her little books never lost their popularity however and today they sell in their millions, translated into numerous languages, and the pleasures of those timeless tales continue to be enjoyed by children all over the world.IT is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is 'soporific.'

For the last thirty years of her life, writing and illustrating gave place to a second career as a sheep farmer and countryside conservationist. As she became financially independent, she was able to buy some land in the Lake District and in 1913, on her marriage to solicitor William Heelis, she moved to live there permanently. In the years before the First World War, demand for her work was so great that she was publishing an average of two new stories a year. She started her career as children's author and illustrator in 1901 when she was thirty-five. She acquired her love and knowledge of the countryside during family holidays, at first in Scotland and then in the Lake District. During her rather lonely childhood and later, as a young woman, she studied art and natural history. Beatrix has created some of the best-loved characters in children's literature.īeatrix Potter was born in London in 1866.

The original peter rabbit books