A History of the Writings of Beatrix Potter is several things at once: a guide to the provenance of the texts and to the models for many settings (illustrated by photographs, chiefly of Sawrey and environs); a history of the publication of the Beatrix Potter books, tracing her dealings with Warne's (in which she showed the spirit that lay behind both her painstaking art and her prosperous farming); and a source-book for fugitive and unpublished pieces. Merely as a research tool this book would easily justify its existence. The picture-letters to Potter's child-friends (from 1893 to 1907) are reproduced in facsimile; they contain the first versions of Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Pig Robinson, and others and are full of convincingly observed and vividly drawn animal figures. The "miniature letters," transcribed, are notable for their mixture of the imaginative and the prosaica blend characteristic of all Potter's work. The value of his book lies in making these stories, published or