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.

From early childhood Beatrix Potter spent time drawing the many pets that she kept in her schoolroom: over the years, her pets included lizards, snails, bats, mice, rabbits and many other animals. During the family’s long summer holidays to rural areas she also took the opportunity to draw the plants and animals she saw in the countryside. Even her earliest childhood drawings show a serious interest in natural history, her sketches annotated with information about the species concerned.

This sheet of studies of a hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius) is dated 11 December 1887. It has been suggested it shows Potter’s pet dormouse Xarifa, although Xarifa had died the year before. Beatrix wrote in her journal:

“On Oct. 18th occurred the death of Poor Miss Mouse, otherwise Xarifa. I was very much distressed, because she had been so sensible about taking medicine that I thought she would get through, but the asthma got over her one night, and she laid herself out in my hand and died. Poor little thing, I thought at one time she would last as long as myself. I believe she was a great age. Her nose and eyebrows were white, and towards the end of her life she was quite blind, but affectionate and apparently happy. I wonder if ever another dormouse had so many acquaintances, Mr. Bright, Mr. J. Millais, and Mr. Leigh Smith had admired and stroke her, amongst others. I think she was in many respects the sweetest little animal I ever knew.”