The story of Peter Hase

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The story of Peter Rabbit (English original title: The Tale of Peter Rabbit ), in recent translations also called The Story of Peter Rabbit , is a British children's book published in 1902, which Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated. It was her first children's book to be published by a publisher.

The story thematizes the adventure of the curious and naughty rabbit Peter Rabbit, who illegally intrudes into Mr. McGregor's garden, where he is discovered and hunted by him. He finally manages to escape and return to his mother, who puts him in bed with a dose of chamomile tea. The story goes back to a letter in pictures that Beatrix Potter wrote to the son of her former governess in 1893, sent five-year-old Noel Moore to cheer up the sick person. At the beginning of the 20th century, Potter took up this story again, revised it and had it - since it did not find a publisher at first - privately printed in small editions to give friends and acquaintances as gifts. Frederick Warne & Co finally decided to bring the book out. It was an instant hit. The book was published several times in the year of publication and has meanwhile been translated into 36 different languages.

The story of Peter Rabbit has resulted in extensive merchandising since its appearance : toys, children's plates, food, clothing, films and other products are linked to the character of Peter Rabbit. Beatrix Potter is jointly responsible for this. As early as 1903 she commissioned a Peter Rabbit doll and a little later she published a Peter Rabbit board game.

2016 marks the 150th anniversary of Beatrix Potter's birthday. The Royal Mint , the mint of the United Kingdom , took this as an opportunity to mint 50 pence coins with an image of Peter Rabbit. It is the first British coin to feature a fictional character from a children's book.

content

The story revolves around a family of anthropomorphic rabbits (incorrectly referred to as a hare in the first translation into German). Widowed mother Rabbit warns her offspring not to invade Mr. McGregor's vegetable garden. Your warning is very specific:

“Your father had a bad accident there. It was made into a pie by Mr. McGregor. "

While her three daughters follow their mother's instructions and collect blackberries along the street, the naughty Peter immediately runs to the garden and squeezes under the gate to eat vegetables. He eats far more than is good for him, so he looks for parsley. On the search, however, he is discovered by Mr. McGregor and loses his jacket and shoes while trying to escape. On the run from Mr. McGregor, he hides in a watering can, which unfortunately is still full of water. But Mr. McGregor finds him, and only with a lot of luck will Peter Rabbit escape the window. He doesn't know the way back and first has to sneak past a cat until he finds the gate under which he slipped into the garden. Mr. McGregor discovers him again, but Peter Rabbit manages to escape under the gate in time. Meanwhile, Mr. McGregor hangs up Peter's little jacket and scarecrow shoes. At home, his mother puts him in bed and gives him chamomile tea to drink, while his sisters Flopsy, Mopsy and Bushelschwanz receive bread, milk and blackberries for dinner.

History of origin

Beatrix Potter was born in 1866 and belonged to a very wealthy upper middle class family. As is typical of girls of her age and social class, Beatrix Potter was raised exclusively at home. However, her and her brother Bertram were allowed to keep an unusually large menagerie of pets. Among other things, they had dogs, kept mice, frogs, lizards and newts as well as rabbits. Bertram also tended bats, a kestrel and a jay. Most of these animals were also drawn by Beatrix Potter. Because of her obvious talent, her governess recommended that her parents hire an additional drawing teacher in 1878, and Beatrix took drawing and painting lessons from a Miss Cameron for the next five years. Her father, who was an avid photographer, also taught her photography.

Beatrix Potter in 1894 with her father Rupert and her brother Bertram

For Beatrix Potter, drawing and watercolor was one of the ways to escape the boring life that social conventions provided for a woman of her time and class. During the 1890s, Potter was very successful in concentrating on natural history illustrations, not yet thinking of children's books. Nevertheless, the beginnings of her work on children's books go back to the early 1890s. Beatrix Potter wrote picture letters to children of her wider family as well as to the children of her former governess. With it she practiced subconsciously to learn a connection between text and visual implementation that could captivate children. Most of the time she picked up brief moments in the picture letters that she had observed: a cat trying to catch two fish; a donkey with an apron blindfolded so that it can be taken onto a ferry, or dancing dogs in a circus. A letter to a child suffering from mumps , in which she explains that she cannot visit it because of the risk of infection, is accompanied by a drawing of a woman running away, accompanied by a small group of "mumps", grotesque figures with short legs and swollen ones Minds, being pursued. On September 4, 1893, the figure of Peter Rabbit appeared for the first time in a letter that the 27-year-old Beatrix Potter wrote to the five-year-old Noel Moore, son of her former governess: “I don't know what to write and such I'll tell you the story of four little rabbits. ”The hero of the story was Potter's own rabbit, Peter.

At the beginning of 1900, her former governess Annie Moore suggested that the picture letters that the Moore children had received from Potter over the years should be processed into a children's book. All her letters had been saved and loaned to Beatrix Potter so that she could draw inspiration from them for a suitable story. She chose the story of Peter Rabbit. The story told in the letter from 1893 was too short, however, so that it had to expand the plot and add more drawings. The six publishers to which she sent inspection copies declined. Some wanted more color illustrations, others wanted text in poetry. However, Potter had precise ideas about what form “her” children's book should have and how high the price should be at which it should go on sale. She decided to initially have Peter Hase's story printed for her own account. On December 16, 1901, the book appeared for the first time in an edition of 250 copies, most of which the author gave away.

The publisher Frederick Warne & Company was among those who had initially responded to hostile Potters sample copies. The publisher then made a decision because there was a lack of works in the publisher's program that could compete on the increasingly interesting children's book market. The negotiations with Beatrix Potter were tough - she wanted the book to be available on the market as cheaply as possible and accepted the fact that she would only receive a fee of 20 British pounds for the initially planned 5000 copies. More important to her was the copyright of later editions - if Frederick Warne & Company didn't reprint the book, they wanted to be able to sell the rights to another publisher. The negotiations were made more difficult by the fact that in 1902, as an unmarried woman, due to the prevailing legal situation, Potter was only considered legally competent to a limited extent despite her 35 years. She was not allowed to sign a contract without her father's consent. There is no definite evidence that Rupert Potter accompanied his daughter to the publisher's office to review the final version of the contract. However, a letter has been received from Beatrix Potter to her publisher in which she apologizes in advance for the fact that her father was occasionally difficult.

On October 2, 1902, The Story of Peter Rabbit was officially published. The publisher had increased the number of the first edition from 5,000 to 8,000 copies, which had already been sold before the book was available in stores. At the end of the year, more than 28,000 copies had already been printed and one year after their first publication the number of Peter Hase books sold was 56,470 copies. Frederick Warne & Company made the mistake of not obtaining copyright in the United States. Pirated editions appeared there as early as 1903, while the publisher continued cooperation with Beatrix Potter and The Story of Squirrel Nutkin : (English original title. The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin brought out).

genre

The story of Peter Rabbit belongs to the fantastic children's and youth literature. Anglo-Saxon literature in particular was a pioneer in this genre . Peter Rabbit counts together with Alice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll , Peter Pan (1911) by JM Barrie , Winnie the Pooh (1926) by AA Milne , The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame , Psammy provides adventure (1902) by Edith Nesbit and The Hobbit (1937) by JRR Tolkien are classics of this genre. Fantastic children's and youth literature was also created in other countries during this period. These include, among others, Pinocchio (1865) by Carlo Collodi , Bambi (1923) by Felix Salten , The wonderful journey of little Nils Holgersson with the wild geese (1906) by the Swedish Nobel Prize laureate Selma Lagerlöf and Gerdt von Bassewitz 's description of Peterchens Mondfahrt (1911) and L. Frank Baums The Wizard of Oz (1900), which is considered the first American novel of this genre, and The Maya the Bee and Her Adventures (1912) by Waldemar Bonsels .

Influences

Beatrix Potter was familiar with the work of Walter Crane , Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott from an early age. All three illustrators preferred to draw their characters in clothing from the early 19th century. Beatrix Potter also took up this convention in her later work. Her father held Caldecott in high esteem and bought three drawings from the 1880 cycle The Three Jovial Huntsmen from him. The date of purchase is not known, but Beatrix repeatedly made copies of these works and unconsciously also adopted parts of his working method: the light color palette, the sparingly used lines and the use of paper that remained white.

The Uncle Remus Stories by the American author Joel Chandler Harris , first published in 1880, are also influential . The stories were read in the Potter family, and between 1893 and 1896 Beatrix Potter drew eight illustrations of Tales of Harris. Harris' narratives, in which talking animals played a large part, had a major impact on contemporary writers in both the UK and North America. The humor was subversive, the dialogues virtuoso, the stories exciting and a protagonist of the stories, who was extremely cunning, cunning and charming at the same time, fascinated a large readership. The charm of the stories, however, was also due to the fact that these seemingly naive fables were set in everyday situations. Like Potter, writers such as Rudyard Kipling , Kenneth Grahame, and AA Milne were greatly influenced by these stories.

Colorful picture books in child-friendly language did not find a large buyers' market until the end of the 19th century. Accordingly, a number of British publishers began to publish picture books for children and had commercial success. Among other things, the Golliwog books, which were first published in 1895, were successful . The Story of Little Black Sambo , a small-format picture book by Helen Bannermann , a Scottish woman living in India and published in 1899, was still successful . Little Black Sambo , which had to be reprinted four times in four months due to its sales success, also inspired Beatrix Potter to the format that her picture books should have. The success that these books had was ultimately also the reason why Frederick Warne & Company decided to enter this market segment and publish Potter's story.

filming

A free film adaptation of the material, directed by Will Gluck , was released in cinemas in early 2018 under the title Peter Hase (OT: Peter Rabbit ).

Trivia

Further life of the author

Beatrix Potter on her farm in the Lake District. The income from her picture books enabled her to acquire them and to make herself independent from her parents.

Beatrix Potter became engaged to Norman Warne in 1905 at the age of 39, who was her manager at Frederick Warne & Company . The engagement met with fierce opposition from Potter's parents, which resulted in the engagement never being officially announced. However, Warne suddenly died of an illness shortly after the engagement. The death of her fiancé led to a deepening break with her parents. With the proceeds from the sale of her picture books - after Peter Rabbit , two more picture stories had appeared annually - Potter bought a farm in the Lake District and moved there. She was a successful sheep farmer at the end of her life and made a significant contribution to preserving the characteristic landscape of the Lake District by donating the property, which she acquired by 1943, to the National Trust .

Valuable first edition

In 2016, a copy from the privately printed first edition of “The Story of Peter Hase” was auctioned on a website for rare books. The starting price was 18,000 pounds sterling, around 23,000 euros. One of the previous owners was Henry Thynne, born in 1905 , 6th Marquess of Bath . The book still bears the bookplate of this previous owner. The British newspaper The Guardian described the condition of the book as excellent in an article about the auction.

literature

  • Linda Lear: Beatrix Potter. The extraordinary life of a Victorian genius. Penguin Books, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-14-100310-8 .
  • Margaret Mackey: Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit. A Children's Classic at 100. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD 2002, ISBN 0-8108-4197-5 .

Online version of the story

The English version with the drawings by Beatrix Potter is available under the following link: The Tale of Peter Rabbit . In Germany the version is still subject to copyright.

Web links

Commons : The story of Peter Hase  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Margaret Mackey: Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit. Lanham 2002, p. 33.
  2. ↑ a b c d The Guardian: Rare Edition of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit set to sell for 18,000 British Pounds , March 4, 2016 , access: March 4, 2016
  3. ↑ Beatrix Potter: The Story of Peter Rabbit. Translation by Anna Maria Graf.
  4. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 38
  5. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 127.
  6. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 86. The original quote is: 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.
  7. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 143.
  8. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 143.
  9. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 148.
  10. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 149.
  11. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 149.
  12. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 33
  13. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 47.
  14. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 47.
  15. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 131.
  16. ↑ Lear: Beatrix Potter . 2007, p. 144 and p. 145.
  17. ↑ Peter Hase in the Internet Movie Database