Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) is one of the world's best-loved children's authors and illustrators. She wrote the majority of the twenty-three Original Peter Rabbit Books between 1901 and 1913. The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Frederick Warne, 1902) is her most famous and best-loved tale.

In spring 1927 Beatrix Potter joined a National Trust campaign to save Cockshott Point on Lake Windermere from development. Her scheme allowed readers of the American Magazine the Horn Book to contribute to ‘The Windermere Fund’, offering fifty original signed drawings from The Tale of Peter Rabbit for sale at a guinea a piece. This drawing of August 1927 reproduces the illustration of Peter by the door in the wall from the well-loved book, when: ‘He found a door in a wall; but it was locked, and there was no room for a fat little rabbit to squeeze underneath.’

Potter’s letter of appeal was published in the August 1927 issue of the Horn Book and was successful. In a letter to her American friend, Marian Frazer Harris Perry, she said: ‘I’m sure I am doing good in trying to save anything I can of our Lake country from being vulgarized; for, as true education advances, the beauty of unspoilt nature will be appreciated; and it would be a pity if the appreciation came too late’.