Rediscovered Beatrix Potter story to delight new generation of kids
Children everywhere, and your parents, rejoice:
A well-behaved black cat who leads "rather a double life" will star in the latest Beatrix Potter story — previously unknown — in a book to be published this year, 102 years after it was written and nearly 75 years after the beloved children's author's death.
To the endearing and enduring cast of Potter characters, such as Mr. Tod, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Tabitha Twitchit and "older, slower, portlier" Peter Rabbit, add Kitty-in-Boots from The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots.
Her story will be published in the USA and the UK in September by Frederick Warne & Co., Potter’s original publisher and an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, according to an announcement by Penguin Random House Children's Books Tuesday.
The BBC published an extract of the story about the female kitty who sported "a gentleman's Norfolk jacket, and little fur-lined boots."
How Kitty-in-Boots' tale was re-discovered reads like a mystery plot, according to the publisher's press release.
It was unearthed two years ago when Jo Hanks, publisher at PRH Children’s in the UK, stumbled across an out-of-print literary history about Beatrix Potter from the early 1970s. In it was a reference to a letter that Potter had sent her publisher in 1914, which referred to a story about “a well-behaved prime black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life,” and an unedited manuscript of the tale.
Potter (1866-1943) remains one of the most loved and best-selling children's authors in English, so naturally Hanks went looking in the Victoria & Albert Museum archives, where there's a large Potter collection. Three manuscripts were found, handwritten in children’s school notebooks, along with one rough color sketch of Kitty-in-Boots, a dummy book with some of the typeset manuscript laid out, and a pencil rough of arch-villain Mr. Tod.
Other letters in the archive revealed that Potter intended to finish the tale, but "interruptions began," including the start of WWI, marriage, sheep farming, even bad colds. She never got back to the story.
"The tale really is the best of Beatrix Potter," said Hanks in a statement. "It has double identities, colorful villains and a number of favorite characters from other tales (including Mr. Tod, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Ribby and Tabitha Twitchit). And, most excitingly, our treasured, mischievous Peter Rabbit makes an appearance – albeit older, slower and portlier!"
The publisher is beyond excited. "This book is pure Beatrix — an unforgettable adventure with characters old and new. This truly is an incredible moment in the Beatrix Potter legacy," said Francesco Sedita, president and publisher of Grosset & Dunlap and Frederick Warne & Co. in the USA.
Illustrator Quentin Blake is doing the illustrations, a tricky assignment given that Potter was the original illustrator for most of her stories and her style remains unmistakable.
Blake said in a statement he couldn't believe it when he was sent the manuscript in 2015 and realized that, with the exception of a single drawing, Potter had never illustrated it.
“I liked the story immediately — it’s full of incident and mischief and character — and I was fascinated to think that I was being asked to draw pictures for it," Blake said. "I have a strange feeling that it might have been waiting for me.”
Besides her two-dozen children's tales, Potter was an early natural scientist, expert on flora, fauna and farming, a prize-winning sheep breeder, and a conservationist when the concept was still new. When she died, she left nearly all her estate property to the British National Trust, including some 4,000 acres, 16 farms, and herds of cattle and sheep.
It was the largest gift at the time to the National Trust and it led to the preservation of land now included in the Lake District National Park.