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This charming book is a psychoanalytic literary study of the work of Beatrix Potter. Alexander Grinstein, applying a psychoanalytic perspective to Potter's published work and some original source material, attempts to elucidate key themes and their development in Beatrix Potter's writing.
Grinstein is obviously a great admirer of Beatrix Potter's work, as am I. He brings a delightful enthusiasm to his subject which enlivens this classic children's literature for the late 20th century reader. Grinstein succeeds in reminding the reader how wonderful Beatrix Potter's sparkling stories and illustrations are, and how appealing to a child's imagination.
The biographical information that Grinstein relates contributes to an understanding of Beatrix Potter's work. Potter, who lived from 1866 to 1943, experienced a lonely and unhappy childhood. An only child until the age of six, she was reared in virtual isolation by governesses and never attended school. According to her diaries, she felt unloved and was painfully shy. Her brother, Bertram, became her only friend in later years. Potter's father was a temperamental, critical man of considerable social prominence and artistic ability. Her mother, of whom she writes with veiled resentment, seems to have been emotionally aloof, critical, and controlling.
Beatrix Potter's diaries are filled with feelings of sadness and self-depreciation, as well as occasional expressions of bitterness at the strictures and unhappiness of her family life. Her personal difficulties were compounded by a bout of rheumatic fever and an extensive period of hair loss when she was 19. Even after she reached adulthood, she remained unhappily but dutifully within her parental home. Despite her parents' objections to the match as unsuitable, she became privately engaged to her publisher when she