Despite her fame - two generations of children had been brought up on the Peter Rabbit stories - she shunned publicity and preferred to live in quiet anonymity as a lakeland farmer. Margaret Lane's remarkable piece of literary detective work, originally published only three years after Beatrix Potter's death, told her story for the first time. Extensively revised in 1985 to include new material that had come to light, it remains essential reading for anyone interested in the background to the author of the famous Peter Rabbit Tales.