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.

Beatrix Potter made many imaginary drawings in the 1890s, before she published her books. This picture series about a guinea pig may well date from this time. In the story we see an unfortunate guinea pig requiring some dental work. Potter attached each drawing to a larger sheet of paper, on which she has given each drawing its caption. The caption for this, the second drawing in the sequence, reads: ‘The guinea pig has doubts’.

Beatrix Potter sometimes used or reworked compositions dating from the 1890s in her later published work. This drawing became the basis of an illustration in her later book The Fairy Caravan (Alexander McKay, 1929); in this later, published version it is accompanied by different text and captioned ‘Tuppeny was too depressed to argue.’ There are also two additional guinea pigs in the background.