Linda Lear

Winner of the 2007
Lakeland Book of the Year Award

"Read Beatrix Potter by Linda Lear and you sense a woman poised between late-
Victorian constraint and the promises, intellectual and amorous, of liberation."
--Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

“Winner of the Lakeland Books of the Year” 2008

"Lear paints an appealing, revealing picture of an independent, accomplished and loving woman who used her art and research to educate herselve and a host of readers."
--Bookpage

"Lear is not only an impeccable historian but a grand storyteller...a magisterial and definitive biography, a delight in every way."
--The Horn Book

"As an appreciation of a life well-lived and a talent almost accidentally nurtured, Beatrix Potter, tells an absorbing story well worth reading."
--Christian Science Monitor

"Potter was a famously close observer of the world around her, and Lear is an equally close observer of her subject. The result is a meticulously researched and brilliantly re-created life that, despite its length and accretion of detail, is endlessly fascinating and often illuminating. It is altogether a remarkable achievement."
--Booklist, *Starred Review*

"In this remarkable biography...the author's meticulous attention to detail is obvious throughout, not to mention her elegant writing and exceptional scholarship. Highly recommended."
--Library Journal

"Potter's witty journals, with their close observations of people, animals, objects and places, serve as the basis for Lear's engrossing account, which will appeal to ecologists, historians, child lit buffs and those who want to know the real Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Benjamin Bunny."
--Publishers Weekly

"The great achievement of this book is the way it knits together Potter's lifelong activities in art and science and shows how they are all part of an extraordinarily integrated life: how her feeling for plants and animals and her finely detailed observations of the natural world were the foundation stones of her children's books as well as her land management skills and environmental awareness."
--The Australian

"An in-depth biography of Beatrix Potter is long overdue and here Linda Lear fills that gap with a thoroughly well-researched and compelling book."
--Judy Taylor, author of Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller and Countrywoman