Virtual Children's Books Exhibits

BEATRIX POTTER

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Hoofers

Beatrix Potter

 

 

12.  Beatrix Potter, author/illustrator.
The Tale of Pigling Bland.
New York: Frederick Warne & Co., 1913.

Pigling Bland and Pigwig dance "over the hills and faraway," having narrowly escaped from the farmhouse of the ogreish Peter Thomas Piperson, where they would have met their ends as ham and bacon. Pigling Bland, the adventures of a little pig sent to market when his mother can't afford to feed all his brothers and sisters, is also Potter's only love story. It was finished just weeks before her marriage to the lawyer William Heelis.

Potter rarely imitated Caldecott directly, but there are several images in Pigling Bland which seem to be inspired by pictures in his exuberant picture books. Perhaps she was thinking of Caldecott's jolly pigs in Hey Diddle Diddle when she drew the final image for her tale.

This is one of Potter's less familiar stories, but it is a charmer that deserves to be better known. Read the story at Project Gutenberg. (Image Credits)