Beatrix Potter loved the countryside and she spent much of her otherwise conventional Victorian childhood drawing and studying animals. Her passion for the natural world lay behind the creation of her famous series of little books. A particular source of inspiration was the English Lake District where she lived for the last thirty years of her life as a farmer and land conservationist, working with the National Trust.
Beatrix Potter gathered material for a book of rhymes over many years. In 1917, when her publisher was in financial difficulties and needed her help, she suggested that Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes could be brought out quickly, using her existing collection of rhymes and drawings. The fact that the illustrations were painted at different times explains why the style occasionally varies.