I knew little about Beatrix Potter, the creator of Peter Rabbit before this day. But before I dive into that I want to give some back ground of where were were: the Blythe House. The Blythe House was once a post office but over the years converted into a storage facility for archives or art, books, displays and much more. One of the thing they have archived are 2 1/2 thousand original collections from Beatrix Potter. However the author herself is one of the most fascinating people we had the opportunity to learn about. Before the age of 15 she developed a code so that she could write freely in her own journals. It took many years and hard work by Leslie Linder, a duke who had fallen in love with Beatrix's stories as a child. He cracked the code, and with it uncovered more on the type of person Beatrix was. Her diaries were not filled with feelings but with history of the times. She wrote factual things she would see or hear on the news, talked about the routine of daily life and was able to print a picture of what life during that time looked like. We learned that the was attentive to nature, an artist as well as a writer, and that all her drawings of the animals are anatomically correct. We were even given the opportunity to see some of the collection they had on site from Beatrix's life! She is well known as a children author, one who created stories for those who didn't have books they could read. She believed in creating stories that children can enjoy with bright and beautiful pictures to help move the story along.
Due to copyright purposes I will not be posting pictures of any of the materials that we saw that day.
To learn more about cracking Beatrix code, click here: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/12/18/beatrix-potters-secret-code/
For more about the Blythe House, click here: https://olympia.london/visiting/local-area/listings/blythe-house