Peter Rabbit was the hero of many of children's books written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. Her first Peter Rabbit book grew out of letters she wrote in 1893 to a friend's invalid son. Beatrix was born in London, but she lived most of her life in a country cottage in Sawrey, Westmoreland County. There she had as pets to include lizards, water newts and ring snakes and many of the small animals that appeared as characters in her stories. The charming watercolor drawings in her books are the result of her close observations of the countryside about her. Her pair of sensible shoes - i.e., heavy, leather clogs - were not only down to earth but made for muck, worn by the woman who in middle age had shed the confines of a middle-class London upbringing for the fells and tarns of England's Lake District. She could comfortably converse about pig farming, trussed poultry or the accuracy of a butter scale as a woman who belonged to the Herdwick Sheepbreeder's Association and who took time out from her honeymoon to take delivery of a bull at a train station!

An exhibition celebrating the legacy of this interesting lady who loved nature can be seen now through May 26, 2002 at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History.

-- Excerpts "World Book Encyclopedia" and "Smithsonian" magazine.