Beatrix Potter

Today* I discovered that Beatrix Potter kept a coded journal from around the age of 14 or 15 until she was 30. The author known for her Tales of Peter Rabbit series was a very interesting woman. In fact it took an engineer named Leslie Linder seven years to decipher her personal journal, which was later published as The journal of Beatrix Potter from 1881 to 1897. He had to crack her code first, though. Her code was also the subject of a book written by M. Daphne Kutzer; Beatrix Potter: Writing in Code.

After doing some research online I found you can read her Peter Rabbit titles here, without the beautiful illustrations, for you to read for free. The website also includes a built-in dictionary that allows you to look up any word in the text. If you can't get hold of her published journal you can read either of these scant excerpts.

Heather
*Another entry from my previous blog
Image used with permission from Children's Library