The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny

      The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a British children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother who puts him to bed after dosing him with camomile tea. The tale was written for five-year-old Noel Moore, son of Potter's former governess Annie Carter Moore, in 1893. It was revised and privately printed by Potter in 1901 after several publishers' rejections but was printed in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1902. The book was a success, and multiple reprints were issued in the years immediately following its debut. It has been translated into 36 languages and with 45 million copies sold it is one of the best-selling books of all time.

      The book has generated considerable merchandise over the decades since its release for both children and adults with toys, dishes, foods, clothing, videos and other products made available. 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.

      The story focuses on a family of anthropomorphic rabbits, the widowed mother rabbit cautioning her young against entering a vegetable garden grown by a man named Mr. McGregor, who had baked her deceased husband into a pie. Whereas her three daughters obediently refrain from entering the garden, her rebellious son Peter defies his mother by trespassing into the garden to snack on some vegetables, losing his clothes along the way. While there, Peter is seen by Mr. McGregor and loses his clothes trying to escape. He finds difficulties in wriggling beneath the opening in the fence through which he'd managed to slide past earlier to invade the garden, and later finds that his abandoned clothing articles were used to dress Mr. McGregor's scarecrow. After returning home, a sickened Peter is bedridden by his mother whereas his well-behaved sisters receive a sumptuous dinner of milk and berries as opposed to Peter's supper of chamomile tea.

      Through the 1890s, Potter sent illustrated story letters to the children of her former governess, Annie Moore, and, 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 had owned a pet rabbit called Peter Piper. 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".

^{More Related Content:}

• The Tale of Peter Rabbit at Project Gutenberg
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit Audio Book at Project Gutenberg
• The Tale of Peter Rabbit Digital Book at The University of Iowa Libraries (Flash)
• World of Peter Rabbit: A website maintained by Potter's first publisher Frederick Warne & Co.