Peter Rabbit and Helen Beatrix Potter - Privet - Hobie

Peter Rabbit
Welcome to 2018! This is the start of the second year for the podcast! As a recap from last year we put out 44 episodes. Almost an episode a week. We had two interviews. One with a Japanese exchange student (Yudai Tanabe), and one with Susie at Laughing Orange Studios. We covered about 23 different rabbit breeds, and three hares, so it looks like every other episode is about a breed. My favorite three episodes from last year were the Space rabbit episode, the Jack-a-lope, and Halloween Rabbits. What was your favorite episode? Post in the comments for the show!

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Today we are going to check out Peter Rabbit!
Peter Rabbit is a fictional animal character in various children's stories by Beatrix Potter. He first appeared in The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902 and subsequently in five more books between 1904 and 1912. Spinoff merchandise includes dishes, wallpaper, and dolls. He appears as a character in a number of adaptations.

This weeks item is A Peter Rabbit Book!

The rabbits in Potter's stories are anthropomorphic and wear human clothes: Peter wears a jacket and shoes. Peter, his widowed mother, Mrs. Josephine Rabbit, as well as his sisters, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail live in a rabbit hole that has a human kitchen, human furniture, as well as a shop where Josephine sells various items. Peter's relatives are Cousin Benjamin Bunny and Benjamin's father Mr. Bouncer Bunny.
Helen Beatrix Potter, known as Beatrix, was born on 28 July 1866 to Rupert and Helen Potter in Kensington, London, and she is one of the most beloved children's authors of all time. She was the daughter of Rupert and Helen Potter, both of whom had artistic interests. Her father trained as a lawyer, but he never actually practiced. Instead he devoted himself to photography and art. Her mother Helen was skilled at embroidery and watercolors. Beatrix got to know several influential artists and writers through her parents, including painter John Everett Millais.
Her younger brother Walter Bertram was born six years after her birth. Both Beatrix and Bertram loved to draw and paint, and often made sketches of their many pets, including rabbits, mice, frogs, lizards, snakes and a bat.
Beatrix was always encouraged to draw, and she spent many hours making intricate sketches of animals and plants, revealing an early fascination for the natural world that would continue throughout her life. Although she never went to school, Beatrix was an intelligent and industrious student, and her parents employed an art teacher, Miss Cameron, and a number of governesses, including Annie Moore, to whom she remained close throughout her life.
Two of Beatrix’s earliest artist models were her pet rabbits. Her first rabbit was Benjamin Bouncer, who enjoyed buttered toast and joined the Potter family on holiday in Scotland where he went for walks on a lead. Benjamin was followed by Peter Piper, who had a talent for performing tricks, and he accompanied Beatrix everywhere.
The most exciting time of the year for Beatrix was the summer, when the family traveled north to spend three months in Scotland. The children had the freedom to explore the countryside, and Beatrix learned to observe plants and insects with an artist’s eye for detail. When Beatrix was sixteen, the family stayed instead at Wray Castle, overlooking Lake Windermere, where Beatrix began a lifelong love of the countryside and of the Lake District.
Botanist, Artist and Storyteller
Beatrix was invited to study fungi at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, and she produced hundreds of detailed botanical drawings and investigated their cultivation and growth.
Encouraged by Charles McIntosh, a revered Scottish naturalist, to make her fungi drawings more technically accurate, Beatrix not only produced beautiful watercolors but also became an adept scientific illustrator. By 1896, she had developed her own theory of how fungi spores reproduced and wrote a paper, ‘On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae’, which was initially rejected by William Thiselton-Dyer, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens. Undeterred, Beatrix continued her research, and after a year George Massee, a fungi expert who worked at the Kew gardens, agreed to present her paper to the Linnean Society of London, as women at that time were not permitted to do so. Although the paper was never published, scientists still recognize her contribution to mycological research today.
Long before she was a published author, Beatrix Potter drew illustrations for some of her favorite stories, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Cinderella, as well as her sketches from nature. Her imaginative art led to the publication of her earliest works – greeting-card designs and illustrations for the publisher Hildesheimer & Faulkner. There followed more publications, including a series of frog illustrations and verses for Changing Pictures, a popular annual offered by the art publisher Ernest Nister, which cemented Beatrix’s desire to publish her own illustrated stories.
Potter first tasted success as an illustrator, selling some of her work to be used for greeting cards.
The story was inspired by a pet rabbit Potter had as a child, which she named Peter Piper.
Yes, there was a real Peter Rabbit. He was a Belgian buck rabbit named Peter Piper. He was actually the second rabbit that Potter kept as a pet—the first was Benjamin Bouncer, who was the inspiration for Benjamin Bunny. They were part of a menagerie of animals that Potter and her brother adopted as children, which also included birds, lizards, mice, snakes, snails, guinea pigs, bats, dogs, cats, and even hedgehogs.
Potter was especially fond of Peter Piper, and would take him on walks on a leash. She later described in a letter how he liked to lie in front of the fire “like a cat. He was clever at learning tricks, he used to jump through a hoop, and ring a bell, and play the tambourine.” In one of her personal editions of Peter Rabbit, Potter wrote an inscription dedicated to “poor old Peter Rabbit, who died on the 26th of January 1901. … An affectionate companion and a quiet friend.”
Through the 1890s, Potter sent illustrated story letters to the children of her former governess, Annie Moore. The first Peter Rabbit story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was originally created in 1893, when Potter was 26 years of age, sent a letter to Noel Moore, the five-year-old son of Potter's former governess, Annie Moore. The boy was ill and Potter wrote him a picture and story letter to help him pass the time and to cheer him up. The letter included sketches illustrating the narrative.

Transcript

Eastwood
Dunkeld
Sep 4th 93

My dear Noel,
I don't know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were – Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter.
They lived with their mother in a sand bank under the root of a big fir tree.
"Now my dears," said old Mrs Bunny "you may go into the field or down the lane, but don't go into Mr McGregor's garden."
Flopsy, Mopsy & Cottontail, who were good little rabbits went down the lane to gather blackberries, but Peter, who was very naughty ran straight away to Mr McGregor's garden and squeezed underneath the gate.
First he ate some lettuce, and some broad beans, then some radishes, and then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley; but round the end of a cucumber frame whom should he meet but Mr McGregor!
Mr McGregor was planting out young cabbages but he jumped up & ran after Peter waving a rake & calling out "Stop thief"!
Peter was most dreadfully frightened & rushed all over the garden, for he had forgotten the way back to the gate. He lost one of his shoes among the cabbages and the other shoe amongst the potatoes. After losing them he ran on four legs & went faster, so that I think he would have got away altogether, if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net and got caught fast by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new.
Mr McGregor came up with a basket which he intended to pop on the top of Peter, but Peter wriggled out just in time, leaving his jacket behind, and this time he found the gate, slipped underneath and ran home safely.
Mr McGregor hung up the little jacket & shoes for a scarecrow, to frighten the blackbirds.
Peter was ill during the evening, in consequence of overeating himself. His mother put him to bed and gave him a dose of camomile tea, but Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.
I am coming back to London next Thursday, so I hope I shall see you soon, and the new baby.
I remain, dear Noel, yours affectionately
Beatrix Potter

After Potter sent the Moore children (including Noel's siblings Norah and Eric) two more illustrated letters, one about a squirrel named Nutkin and another about a frog named Jeremy Fisher, the children's mother, Annie, suggested she turn them into children’s books.
In 1900, Moore, realizing the commercial potential of Potter's stories, suggested they be made into books. Potter embraced the suggestion, and, borrowing her complete correspondence (which had been carefully preserved by the Moore children), selected a letter written on 4 September 1893 to five-year-old Noel that featured a tale about a rabbit named Peter. Potter biographer Linda Lear explains: "The original letter was too short to make a proper book so [Potter] added some text and made new black-and-white illustrations...and made it more suspenseful. These changes slowed the narrative down, added intrigue, and gave a greater sense of the passage of time. Then she copied it out into a stiff-covered exercise book, and painted a colored frontispiece showing Mrs Rabbit dosing Peter with camomile tea".
Potter’s beautiful illustrations came from her interest in the natural world. As a child, she would draw and sketch animals around her with a sharp, observing eye. She could be quite ruthless about it, in fact. When a pet died, she would skin and boil its body so she could use the skeleton for anatomical sketches. She studied the plant world as well, producing over 300 paintings of mushrooms by 1901. (Her study of mushrooms led Potter to submit a paper on spore reproduction to the Linnean Society of London. But it had to be read by botanist George Massee because women weren't allowed at the meetings.) All this practice and close observation led to her elegant style, where animals look real even though they’re wearing top hats and petticoats.
As Lear explains, Potter titled The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor's Garden and sent it to publishers, but "her manuscript was returned ... including Frederick Warne & Co. ... who nearly a decade earlier had shown some interest in her artwork. Some publishers wanted a shorter book, others a longer one. But most wanted colored illustrations which by 1900 were both popular and affordable". The several rejections were frustrating to Potter, who knew exactly how her book should look (she had adopted the format and style of Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo) "and how much it should cost". She decided to publish the book herself, and on 16 December 1901 the first 250 copies of her privately printed The Tale of Peter Rabbit were "ready for distribution to family and friends".
So Potter reworked Peter Rabbit, doubling its length and adding 25 new illustrations. Six publishers rejected the story, in part because they didn’t agree with Potter’s vision for the work. She wanted the book to be small for children’s hands, and the publishers wanted it to be bigger, and therefore more expensive. Potter refused, explaining that she would rather make two or three books costing 1 shilling each than one big book because “little rabbits cannot afford to spend 6 shillings on one book, and would never buy it.” In December 1901, she self-published Peter Rabbit. The 200 copies sold out in a few months and she ordered a reprint.
Meanwhile, Potter continued to distribute her privately printed edition to family and friends, with the celebrated creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, acquiring a copy for his children. When the first private printing of 250 copies was sold out, another 200 were prepared. She noted in an inscription in one copy that her beloved pet rabbit Peter had died.
To help Peter Rabbit get published, a friend rewrote it as a poem. While Potter was self-publishing, Canon Rawnsley, a family friend, rewrote the story in rhyming couplets in an attempt to get publishers interested again. His version began: “There were four little bunnies/ no bunnies were sweeter/ Mopsy and Cotton-tail,/ Flopsy and Peter.'' Rawnsley submitted his text with Potter’s illustrations to the publishers Frederick Warne & Co. They agreed to publish the book, but with one stipulation—they wanted to use Potter’s simpler language.
In 1901, as Lear explains, a Potter family friend and sometime poet, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, set Potter's tale into "rather dreadful didactic verse and submitted it, along with Potter's illustrations and half her revised manuscript, to Frederick Warne & Co.," who had been among the original rejecters.
Warne editors declined Rawnsley's version "but asked to see the complete Potter manuscript" –
Warne wanted color illustrations throughout the "bunny book" (as the firm referred to the tale) and suggested cutting the illustrations "from forty-two to thirty-two ... and marked which ones might best be eliminated". Potter initially resisted the idea of color illustrations, but then realized her stubborn stance was a mistake. She sent Warne "several color illustrations, along with a copy of her privately printed edition" which Warne then handed to their eminent children's book illustrator L. Leslie Brooke for his professional opinion. Brooke was impressed with Potter's work. Fortuitously, his recommendation coincided with a sudden surge in the small picture-book market. Their interest stimulated by the opportunity The Tale of Peter Rabbit offered the publisher to compete with the success of Helen Bannerman's wildly popular Little Black Sambo and other small-format children's books then on the market. When Warne inquired about the lack of colour illustrations in the book, Potter replied that rabbit-brown and green were not good subjects for coloration.
Potter arrived at an agreement with Warne for an initial commercial publication of 5,000 copies. Negotiations dragged on into the following year, but a contract was finally signed in June 1902. Potter was closely involved in the publication of the commercial edition – redrawing where necessary, making minor adjustments to the prose and correcting punctuation. The blocks for the illustrations and text were sent to printer Edmund Evans for engraving, and she made adjustments to the proofs when she received them. Lear writes that "Even before the publication of the tale in early October 1902, the first 8,000 copies were sold out. By the year's end there were 28,000 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in print. By the middle of 1903 there was a fifth edition sporting colored end-papers ... a sixth printing was produced within the month"; and a year after the first commercial publication there were 56,470 copies in print.
Over the years, The Tale of Peter Rabbit has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and as of 2008, the Peter Rabbit series has sold more than 151 million copies in 35 languages.
Peter Rabbit made his first appearance in 1902 in The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
The story focuses on a family of anthropomorphic rabbits. The widowed mother rabbit cautions her young against entering the vegetable garden of a man named Mr. McGregor, telling them: "your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor". Her three daughters obediently refrain from entering the garden, going down the lane to pick blackberries, but her rebellious son Peter enters the garden to snack on some vegetables. Peter ends up eating more than is good for him and goes looking for parsley to cure his stomach ache. Peter is spotted by Mr. McGregor and loses his jacket and shoes while trying to escape. He hides in a watering can in a shed, but then has to run away again when Mr. McGregor finds him, and ends up completely lost. After sneaking past a cat, Peter sees the gate where he entered the garden from a distance and heads for it, despite being spotted and chased by Mr. McGregor again. With difficulty he wriggles under the gate, and escapes from the garden, but he spots his abandoned clothing being used to dress Mr. McGregor's scarecrow. After returning home, a sick Peter is sent to bed by his mother, while his well-behaved sisters receive a sumptuous dinner of milk and berries as opposed to Peter's supper of chamomile tea.
In The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, first published in 1904, Peter's cousin Benjamin Bunny brings him back to Mr. McGregor's garden and they retrieve the clothes Peter lost in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. But after they gather onions to give to Josephine, they are captured by Mr. McGregor's cat. Bouncer arrives and rescues them, but also reprimands Peter and Benjamin for going into the garden by whipping them with a switch. In this tale, Peter displays some trepidation about returning to the garden.
In The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies, first published in 1909, Peter has a small role and appears only briefly. He is grown up and his sister Flopsy is now married to their cousin Benjamin. The two are the parents of six little Flopsy Bunnies. Peter and Josephine keep a nursery garden[a] and the bunnies come by asking him for spare cabbage.
In The Tale of Mr. Tod, first published in 1912, Benjamin and Flopsy's children are kidnapped by notorious badger Tommy Brock. Peter helps Benjamin chase after Brock, who hides out in the house of the fox, Mr. Tod. Mr. Tod finds Brock sleeping in his bed and as the two get into a scuffle, Peter and Benjamin rescue the children.
Peter makes cameo appearances in two other tales. In The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, first published in 1905, Peter and Benjamin are customers of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, a hedgehog washerwoman. The two rabbits are depicted in one illustration peeping from the forest foliage. In The Tale of Ginger and Pickles, first published in 1909, Peter and other characters from Potter's previous stories make cameo appearances in the artwork, patronising the shop of Ginger and Pickles.
To mark the 110th anniversary of the publication of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Frederick Warne & Co. commissioned British actress Emma Thompson to write The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit, in which Peter ends up in Scotland after accidentally hitching a ride on Mr. and Mrs. McGregor's wagon. The book was released on 18 September 2012. In autumn 2012, it was reported that Thompson would write more Peter Rabbit books. Her next tale, The Christmas Tale Of Peter Rabbit, was released in 2013, followed by The Spectacular Tale Of Peter Rabbit in 2014.
“Once upon a time there was a serious, well-behaved young black cat, it belonged to a kind old lady who assured me that no other cat could compare with Kitty.” Thus begins the newly discovered children’s story by renowned British author Beatrix Potter.
In 2016, Beatrix Potter fans received welcome news. A previously unpublished story, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, would be making its way to bookstore shelves that fall. An unedited manuscript for the work had been discovered by children's book editor Jo Hanks. Potter had only done one illustration for the book so Quentin Blake created the images to accompany this tale. Peter is said to be in the newly rediscovered book, The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots. According to the publisher, Peter is now older, “full-of-himself” and has “transformed into a rather portly buck rabbit."
Now, Penguin Random House has announced the story, which was written over a century ago, will be published in September, 2016, in conjunction with celebrations being planned to celebrate the 150-year anniversary of Potter’s birth.
‘The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots’ tells the story of a cat who’s leading a double life. Jo Hanks, a publisher with Penguin Random House, discovered the 1914 manuscript two years ago after he came across a mention of it in an obscure literary history of Potter which sent him to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and knee-deep into the Potter archives.
It appears the author was intending to publish the story; she had written and revised it twice, and after rewriting it for a third time she had it typeset. The author had even begun the process of laying out a proof dummy. The only thing left were the illustrations.
Then life interrupted her; World War I started, a new marriage and a new farming business among her distractions. Whatever the reason, she never completed the manuscript, which has been described as possibly her best work – filled with humor, rebellious characters and even a couple of intriguing villains. Some old favorites also make an appearance; Peter Rabbit of course, although older, and everyone’s favorite hedgehog: Mrs Tiggywinkle.
The author had completed just one drawing to accompany the story, so Quentin Blake, who provided the illustrations for Roald Dahl’s books, has been selected to complete the illustrations for The Tale of Kitty-In-Boots.
Merchandising
Peter Rabbit was the first character to be fully merchandised, and it was Beatrix Potter’s idea. In 1903, seeing the popularity of Peter Rabbit, she began to sew a doll version for Warne’s niece, writing, “'I am cutting out calico patterns of Peter, I have not got it right yet, but the expression is going to be lovely; especially the whiskers—(pulled out of a brush!)” She patented the doll, making Peter Rabbit the oldest licensed character. Potter was one of the first to be responsible for such merchandise when she patented a Peter Rabbit doll in 1903 and followed it almost immediately with a Peter Rabbit board game. She also invented a Peter Rabbit board game for two players in 1904, a complex version of which was redesigned by Mary Warne and came to market thirteen years later. In addition to toys and games, Beatrix published books, including Peter Rabbit’s Almanac and painting books for Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-duck. She felt passionately that all merchandise should remain faithful to her original book illustrations and be of the highest quality. The merchandising helped make Peter Rabbit into a popular icon and turned The World of Beatrix Potter into one of the biggest literature-based licensing organizations of its day.
The character has been depicted in a multitude of spinoff merchandise such as porcelain figurines and dishes. Peter Rabbit had also appeared on the packaging of the infant formula Enfamil.
Frederick Warne & Co owns the trademark rights of the Beatrix Potter characters. However, most of the stories are in the US public domain, as they were published before 1923.
American copyright
Warne's New York office "failed to register the copyright for The Tale of Peter Rabbit in the United States", and unlicensed copies of the book "(from which Potter would receive no royalties) began to appear in the spring of 1903. There was nothing anyone could do to stop them". To her dismay, the firm failed to register copyright in the United States, leading to piracies and loss of revenue. Although she helped save the company in 1917, after embezzlement by another Warne brother nearly bankrupted it, she scolded them on quality, condemning a copy of Peter Rabbit’s Almanac for 1929 as “wretched.” She wrote sharply, “It is impossible to explain balance & style to people, if they don’t see it themselves.” While she enthusiastically crafted her own unique merchandise prototypes — including an extraordinarily soulful Peter Rabbit doll — she could have had no idea of the extent of commodification to come.
The enormous financial loss ... [to Potter] only became evident over time", but the necessity of protecting her intellectual property hit home after the successful 1903 publication of The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin when her father returned from Burlington Arcade in Mayfair at Christmas 1903 with a toy squirrel labelled "Nutkin".
Potter asserted that her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the "longevity of her books comes from strategy", writes Potter biographer Ruth MacDonald. She was the first to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales; between 1903 and 1905 these included a Peter Rabbit stuffed toy, an unpublished board game, and nursery wallpaper.
Considerable variations to the original format and version of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, as well as spin-off merchandise, have been made available over the decades. Variant versions include "pop-ups, toy theaters, and lift-the-flap books". By 1998, modern technology had made available "videos, audio cassette, a CD-ROMs, a computer program, and Internet sites", as described by Margaret Mackey writing in The case of Peter Rabbit: changing conditions of literature for children. She continues: "Warne and their collaborators and competitors have produced a large collection of activity books and a monthly educational magazine". A plethora of other Peter Rabbit related merchandise exists, and "toy shops in the United States and Britain have whole sections of [the] store specially signposted and earmarked exclusively for Potter-related toys and merchandise".
Unauthorized copying of The Tale of Peter Rabbit has flourished over the decades, including products only loosely associated with the original. In 1916, American Louise A. Field cashed in on the popularity by writing books such as Peter Rabbit Goes to School and Peter Rabbit and His Ma, the illustrations of which showed him in his distinctive blue jacket. In an animated movie by Golden Films, The New Adventures of Peter Rabbit, "Peter is given buck teeth, an American accent and a fourth sister Hopsy." Another video "retelling of the tale casts Peter as a Christian preacher singing songs about God and Jesus."
The Peter Rabbit (rather than other Beatrix Potter characters) stories and merchandise are very popular in Japan: many Japanese visit the Lake District after becoming familiar with Potter's work at an early age at school. There is an accurate replica of Potter's house and a theme park in Japan, and a series of Mr McGregor's gardens in one of the largest banks. Merchandisers in Japan estimate that 80% of the population have heard of Peter Rabbit.
In 2016, Peter Rabbit and other Potter characters appeared on a small number of collectors' 50p UK coins.
Movie Adaptations
In 1938, shortly after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney became interested in making an animated film based on The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter refused. Some accounts say this was because she wanted to remain in control of the rights to her work. Others suggest that she didn’t think her drawings were good enough for large-scale animation, which she thought would reveal all their imperfections. However, most likely Beatrix Potter refused to give the rights to Disney because of marketing issues.
In 1935, the story was loosely adapted in the Merrie Melodies short film, Country Boy. It shows some modifications in relation to Beatrix Potter's original story, most notably the Rabbit family surname is changed to "Cottontail" and Peter having two brothers and a sister rather than 3 sisters. In 1971, Peter Rabbit appeared as a character in the ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter. In late 1991, HBO aired an animated musical adaptation of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, narrated by Carol Burnett, as part of the network's Storybook Musicals series, which was later released to VHS by Family Home Entertainment under HBO license.
Several of the stories featuring Peter Rabbit were also animated for the 1992 BBC anthology series, The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends and two edutainment titles published by Mindscape The Adventures of Peter Rabbit & Benjamin Bunny in 1995 and Beatrix Potter: Peter Rabbit's Math Garden in 1996. Both of which have since been released on VHS and DVD.
In 2006, Peter Rabbit was heavily referenced in a biopic about Beatrix Potter entitled Miss Potter. In December 2012, a new CGI-animated children's TV series titled Peter Rabbit premiered on Nickelodeon, with a full series run beginning in February 2013. Peter was voiced by Colin DePaula throughout Season 1 and recanted by L. Parker Lucas for Season 2 in the US version. In the U.K. version he is voiced by Connor Fitzgerald.
Also in 2012, Quantum Theater produced a new stage adaptation of the tales of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny. Written by Michael Whitmore the play toured the UK until 2015.
More recently, John Patrick is adapting a number of Beatrix Potter's tales into an upcoming live-action/animated musical feature film for his brand-new film studio, called Storybook Studio. The film will be titled Beatrix Potter's The Tales of Peter Rabbit and Friends. One of the stories adapted for the film is The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Peter will be voiced by child actress Sienna Adams. John Patrick has released a preview clip of the film to YouTube.
An animated/live-action adaptation, Peter Rabbit, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, is scheduled to be released on 9 February 2018. James Corden will voice Peter Rabbit and Rose Byrne will star in the live-action role of the lead female named Bea. Other cast members include Margot Robbie, Daisy Ridley and Elizabeth Debicki. Will Gluck is directing and producing the film and Zareh Nalbandian is also producing, while Lauren Abrahams is overseeing the project for Sony Pictures Animation.
Peter Rabbit's feud with Mr. McGregor reaches new heights as both compete for the affections of a kind animal lover who lives next door.
Cast
Domhnall Gleeson as Mr. Thomas McGregor, a farmer and exterminator who seeks to be rid of Peter Rabbit and his mischievous acts.
Rose Byrne as Bea, a kind animal lover who Thomas meets next door.
Sam Neill as Old Farmer McGregor.
The film is scheduled to be released on February 9, 2018.

The Lake District
When Peter Rabbit came out, Potter was 36 years old. She worked closely with her editor, Norman Warne, on it and several other books. The two became very close and in July 1905, Warne proposed marriage, even though Potter’s parents objected to his social position. They didn’t want their upper-class daughter to marry a man who worked in a “trade.” Still, Potter accepted his proposal. One month later, Warne fell sick and died of a blood disorder that was probably un-diagnosed leukemia.
She bought Hill Top Farm in the Lake District that same year and there she wrote such books as The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907) and The Tale of Samuel Whiskers (1908).
Beatrix loved the Lake District, and it became her solace after the death of her beloved Norman.
Afterward, Potter remained unmarried for many years. Finally, in 1913, she married William Heelis, a lawyer. Her family objected to him, too.
Income from her books enabled her to invest in farmland, including Hill Top Farm, which would become a feature in many of her tales.
As she invested in the Lake District, she developed a relationship with William Heelis, a local solicitor who assisted her property dealings. William proposed to Beatrix in 1912, and they were married in London the following year. In 1913, Potter married local lawyer William Heelis. She only produced a few more books after tying the knot. Potter published The Fairy Caravan in 1926, but only in the United States. She thought the book was too autobiographical to be released in England. The Tale of Little Pig Robinson (1930) proved to be her final children's book. They lived together at Castle Cottage in their beloved Lake District until her death in 1943.
Beatrix was a staunch supporter of the National Trust, having been impressed on meeting its founder Hardwicke Rawnsley from her first visit to the Lake District at sixteen. She followed its principles in preserving her buildings and farms in keeping with the rural culture of the area, and she saved many farms from developers.
Instead of writing, Potter focused much of her attention on her farms and land preservation in the Lake District. She was a successful breeder of sheep and well regarded for her work to protect the beautiful countryside she adored.
During her lifetime, Beatrix bought fifteen farms and took a very active part in caring for them. Dressed in clogs, shawl and an old tweed skirt, she helped with the hay-making, waded through mud to unblock drains, and searched the fells for lost sheep. Beatrix bred Herdwick sheep on her farms in the Lake District, and said she was at her happiest when she was with her farm animals. She won a number of prizes for her sheep at local shows, and became the first elected female President of the Herdwick Sheep Breeders’ Association in 1943.
Legacy
Beatrix died in 1943
Potter died on December 22, 1943, in Sawrey, England. In her will, she left much of her land holdings to the National Trust to protect it from development and to preserve it for future generations. leaving fifteen farms and over four thousand acres of land to the National Trust.
In accordance with her wishes, Hill Top Farm was kept exactly as it had been when she lived in it, and receives thousands of visitors every year.
Potter also left behind a mystery—she had written a journal in code. The code was finally cracked and the work published in 1966 as The Journal of Beatrix Potter. To this day, generation after generation are won over by her charming tales and illustrations.
After Potter died in 1943 at the age of seventy-seven, Warne cast itself as the guardian of her legacy. But eventually the guardian began behaving badly, seeking to wring profits from its most famous long-eared property. In 1983, Warne was acquired by Penguin, itself owned by the international conglomerate Pearson, the largest book publisher in the world. Then, as scholar Margaret Mackey chronicles in The Case of Peter Rabbit: Changing Conditions of Literature for Children, Warne embarked on the expensive process of remaking printing plates for Potter’s books. While the new reproductions were a welcome improvement, Warne festooned them with what Mackey terms “aggressive” assertions of copyright, although Peter was already in the public domain. (In the UK, copyright protection lapsed but was then extended until 2013 when the European Union “harmonized” copyright law.) Warne seized on its “re-originated” illustrations to declare itself “owner of all rights, copyrights and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations,” going so far as to attach a “tm” to the scampering Peter on the cover. Back in 1979, the publisher had sued a competitor, claiming trademark rights to eight images from Potter’s books that, it argued, were identified in the public mind with Warne alone. The case was settled out of court, but Viva R. Moffat, a legal scholar who teaches at the University of Denver, has called Warne’s claims (in a paper on “Mutant Copyrights”) a “stretch.”
Warne has applied for trademarks in the US, and in the EU for every imaginable Peter Rabbit–related item that might feasibly be sold, from “books and texts in all media” to “toilet seat covers” and “meat extracts.” Moffat assails the practice of forcing trademarks to pinch-hit for lapsed copyright, while another legal expert, Jason Mazzone (who teaches intellectual property law at Brooklyn Law School), defines the placement of misleading warnings on public domain works as “copyfraud” in his book by the same name.
Warne’s zealous pursuit of its rights has not deterred it from crass acts of its own. In 1987, the same year it published its painstakingly remade edition, the firm allowed Ladybird Books, a purveyor of cheap paperbacks owned by the parent company, Pearson, to market The Tale of Peter Rabbit with bowdlerized text, eliminating Potter’s dry wit, dispensing with the pie made of Peter’s father (Mrs. Rabbit instead explains that Mr. McGregor just “doesn’t like rabbits”), and replacing Potter’s illustrations with photos of stuffed animals. Warne was excoriated in The Times of London, which condemned the new edition as “Hamlet without the ghost, Othello without the handkerchief.” Undaunted, a few years later Warne took out an advertisement in The Bookseller — “Peter Rabbit Packs a Powerful Punch” — threatening those who wandered into its garden with “expensive legal action”
One last question: why do so many Japanese tourists visit Potter's Lakeland cottage? According to the man from the Cumbrian tourist board interviewed on Radio 5 earlier this week, it is because Japanese children use her books to learn English. I love the idea of a nation mislearning another through such a distorting lens. To the people of Japan, I say this: your delightfully outré Edwardian syntax will do you no good in modern Britain, nor will your bizarre Potterian ideas about our dress codes and ethical views
http://mentalfloss.com/article/75173/9-facts-about-peter-rabbit
https://www.peterrabbit.com/about-beatrix-potter/
http://www.hbook.com/2013/05/choosing-books/horn-book-magazine/peter-rabbit-and-the-tale-of-a-fierce-bad-publisher/
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/tale-of-peter-rabbit.html
https://www.biography.com/people/beatrix-potter-9445208
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/dec/07/booksforchildrenandteenagers
http://www.newhistorian.com/peter-rabbit-returns-for-potters-150th-birthday/5869/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Rabbit_(film)

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