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.

The various drawings of bats in the Linder Bequest are dated between 1884 and 1887, while this one probably dates from a visit to Camfield Place, the home of Potter’s grandparents, in September 1886 (see also museum number BP.399). There is a study of the gardener’s cottage at Camfield Place on the back of this sheet.

In 1884 Beatrix described a pet bat owned by her brother in her journal: ‘Bertram went back to school September 16th. Leaving me responsibility of a precious bat. It is a charming little creature, quite tame and apparently happy as long as it has sufficient flies and raw meat. I fancy bats are things most people are pleasingly ignorant about. I had no idea they were so active on their legs, they are in fact provided with four legs and two wings as well, and their tail is very useful for trapping flies.’ That same year Bertram advised Beatrix how to kill and stuff the pet bat: ‘If he cannot be kept alive as I suppose he can’t, you had better kill him, & stuff him as well as you can. Be sure to take his measurements most carefully before you stuff him’.