Early life

Helen Beatrix Potter was born in 1866 in London. Educated by governesses, she turned the schoolroom of her Kensington home into a menagerie filled with rabbits, hedgehogs, frogs, lizards and mice. With an insatiable curiosity, she made detailed sketches of these creatures, as well as plant life and insects. She even dispatched her brother Bertram’s longeared bat with chloroform so she could stuff it and take careful measurements.