The Tale of Peter Rabbit

I DON’T know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits, whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter,’ wrote Beatrix Potter in 1893, in a letter to a little boy, the five-year-old son of her former governess, who was suffering from scarlet fever. A decade later, these lines, only slightly adjusted, formed the opening to what has become one