Personal Experiences influenced The Tale of Peter Rabbit

The book was a letter before it was a book. In September 1893 Beatrix Potter wrote to Noel Moore, the five-year-old son of her former governess, who was ill, and told him a story about four rabbits because she could not think of anything else to write. She borrowed the letter back years later to make the book out of it. The rabbits were hers. She kept them as pets and drew them constantly from life, including a Belgian hare called Peter Piper who went about on a lead and who is the reason Peter behaves like a rabbit rather than like a small person. She published it herself first, in 1901, after six publishers turned it down.