Rabbits were her best friends

If there ever was an unlikely candidate for a biopic and "celebrity of the month" treatment, it would be Beatrix Potter. The revered children's author and illustrator lived a quiet, estimable life, far removed from the drama so often associated with literary biography.

Until her mid-40s Potter was a spinster and dutiful Victorian daughter. In her 20s and 30s, while her peers were either obsessing over the search for a husband or engaging in romantic high jinks, she immersed herself in the study of geology and paleontology, fretting mostly about the correctness of her sketches of fossils and fungi.

Even later in life, as a famed author and independently wealthy property owner, she cut a decidedly undashing figure. A young boy who knew her at that time recalls that even though he took no interest in clothes, he couldn't help noticing her dowdiness.

And yet today, a little more than 64 years after her death, Potter is the subject of a serious new biography, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, even as Renée Zellweger portrays her in a major movie release, also unveiled this month. It's a tribute, perhaps, to the enduring appeal of intelligence and talent. Potter had plenty of both.

Born in 1866 into a wealthy Victorian family, young Beatrix entered a world in which little was required of her other than to entertain herself and, someday, to marry well.

Potter's father, Rupert, was an amateur artist who trained as a solicitor but appears to spent little or no time in the office. Her mother, Helen, was a fearsome social snob, obsessed with making a place for herself among London's elite.

Without trying, however, Rupert and Helen Potter created an atmosphere perfect for nurturing the natural talents of their daughter. Left in the hands of a governess, Beatrix was gently educated and largely allowed to follow her own passions, which included keeping pets, playing outdoors, and drawing.

For many years, however, it seemed that such circumstances had combined to create a misfit. The young Miss Potter was a shy creature, more comfortable with rabbits and mice than with her peers. Although she once wrote that "a happy marriage is the crown of a woman's life," she had no taste for the matchmaking conventions of the time (or for her mother's ambitions for a mate with the right family name) and so the years passed and Potter remained home alone with her parents.

But Potter's time was not wasted. Energetic and impassioned, she continued her scientific studies even as she entertained her small circle of friends and family with drawings of her pets and charming stories about them.

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