The Cottage Tales Series: The Backstory

BookScapes 8

Over the past few months, I’ve been sharing the backstories of the various series I’ve written over the past three-plus decades. In December, I wrote about the China Bayles series (1992-present); in January, about the Robin Paige Victorian/Edwardian mysteries (1994-2006) that Bill and I created and worked on together; and in February, on my Hidden Women series (standalone biographical novels).

Since this is ancient history (I’ve been writing forever), here’s a brief timeline. The first China Bayles mystery, Thyme of Death, was published in 1992 (now: 29 titles, with the new book coming in June).  Three years later, in 1995, Bill and I published Death at Bishop’s Keep, the first of our Robin Paige series. So by that time, I was writing two books a year.

I worked much faster then than I do now, usually at the rate of about 1500 words a day, mostly 6 days a week. I usually expected to spend about 12 weeks on a China Bayles mystery, and 15-18 weeks working with Bill on the Robin Paige historicals. The publisher expected us to set aside 3-4 weeks for book promotion, which I scheduled myself, as a driving tour, so I could visit smaller towns. And Bill and I liked to take a few weeks off for travel, usually in England.

All of which meant—theoretically, anyway—that there was time in the year for a third writing project. Yes, I know: you’re probably thinking that another book would be madness. But I’ve always liked to stay busy. And while I enjoyed taking care of the garden and the barnyard animals here on our homestead, writing was what I loved to do then—and still is.

The year after the Robin Paige series got underway, I began thinking about what else I might like to do—and I didn’t have to look far. Our Robin Paige mysteries included historical characters: Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Lillie Langtry, Winston Churchill and his mother Jennie, and more. And in Death at Gallows Green (1996), we featured Beatrix Potter, the author/illustrator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and many other smash hits of the early 1900s. No kidding—every one of Miss Potter’s children’s books was a runaway best-seller, both in the UK and the US. I began studying her journalm which was written in a cipher that took a dedicated researcher 13 years to decode! I collected all of her little books and numerous biographies and books about her remarkable art and her studies of fungi. I was charmed.

And then, on our next research trip to England, we took an extra few days to drive up to the Lake District and visit the village of Near Sawrey, where Beatrix bought Hill Top Farm in 1905 and lived from 1913 until her death in 1943. Our time there was magical. I knew I wanted to write about this amazingly talented lady who lived with her animal companions in this enchanted place.

Beatrix Potter at Hill Top, about 1905

I settled on the idea of writing a series of books that would span her early years at Hill Top, 1905-1913. By that time, she was already an established author and, in her thirties, a spinster. She had fallen in love with her publisher, Norman Warne, and agreed in 1905 to marry him, a match was bitterly opposed by her class-conscious parents (Norman was “in trade” and “unworthy”). But he died shortly after their engagement, and Beatrix was left to put her life back together.

She chose the small farm near Lake Windermere, perhaps as a holiday home for herself and Norman. After he was gone, Hill Top Farm became her private retreat, a place where she could escape from her dictatorial parents and from the sooty, noisy city. Most of her 24 children’s books were written here.

The farmhouse at Hill Top

While my project was to be based on real events and real people in Beatrix’s life, I wanted to write novels, not a biography. But my Miss Potter would be no Miss Marple, obsessing over dead bodies in the garden, poisonings in the kitchen, and bloody stabbings in the library. And even though I planned to include some of Beatrix’s animals, the books wouldn’t be children’s books.

What I had in mind was a series of eight books about Beatrix the artist, as she gradually released herself from the tyranny of her parents and created an independent life in English Lakes. These would be quiet village stories, full of the daily doings of the human and animal inhabitants of the hamlet, the farms, and the fells. I loved the Fairacre and Thrush Green books written by Dora Jessie Saint under the pseudonym of Miss Read. I wanted these novels to be something like hers, with Beatrix finding herself as a writer and self-determining woman at the center of a quirky village life. I would call the series The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter.

The village of Near Sawrey, Furness Fells to the west

Having sorted it all out, I did—of course—what every writer does next: I wrote a proposal and sent it to my Berkley editor, Natalee Rosenstein. There was a silence. Then, after quite a few weeks, she said that it was a nice idea. She liked it. But there were problems. Aren’t there always? But these were . . . well, real problems.

The first was that Berkley’s Prime Crime was a mystery imprint. Readers would expect a plot built around a crime (typically, a murder) and be disappointed if they didn’t find it. Crime was possible, I agreed reluctantly, although it was likely to be . . . not so much. The dead bodies (if any) would be found off-stage. The villains would suffer from one of the familiar seven sins: greed, pride, envy, avarice, wrath, sloth, and lust. Well, maybe not much lust. It might be 1910, but the characters were still operating under Victorian rules of conduct.

And the animals? Therein lay a different, and difficult, problem. I had first thought of using only Beatrix’s animals. But these were her artistic creations and hence copyrighted—copyrights that her publisher had extended. They couldn’t appear in my books without permission. For a while, this seemed like a major problem and I worried that I might have to leave them out. Although I had never contemplated using an animal as a viewpoint character, I began to think I should create my own animals, village and barnyard and wild animals that would take the place of hers.

Jemima Puddle-Duck and her whiskery gentleman, 1908. Public domain.

But my editor, bless her, went to bat for the project. As it turned out, Berkley was owned by Penguin Books (now Penguin Random House), which also (happily!) owned Beatrix’s publisher, Frederick Warne. There was a behind-the-scenes handshake and Miss Potter’s animals were given permission to appear in the Cottage Tales. In order to prepare the reader for animal characters, there would be animals on the cover. But not Potter’s animals. The owl on the cover is my Professor Galileo Newton Owl, D. Phil, in the company of Fritz the ferret and Radley Rattail. While this was being settled, you see, I had decided that these other animals could play an important role in the books. Very quickly, I came to love them.

The Tale of Hill Top Farm, the first book in the series, appeared in 2004, introducing Beatrix to her neighbors and new friends in the hamlet of New Sawrey. The eighth and final book, The Tale of Castle Cottage, wrapped up the series in 2011, celebrating her marriage to local solicitor Willie Heelis—not a favorite of her parents, either. But by that time, they had lost their power to control their daughter’s choices. Beatrix had freed herself to follow her heart—the major theme of the overall series.

I have more to say about the research writing of this series, which was quite different from anything I have done, before or since. But I’ll save that for Part 2 of this post (coming in a few weeks). Until then, I’ll leave you with one reader’s assessment of the first book—a thoughtful, perceptive review that I treasure, a dozen years after it was written.

There is not just one mystery in this story, there are many and Miss Potter is not the only person responsible for solving them. Instead of thinking about this novel as a murder mystery, think about it more as a very small community of people who are so closely connected in their lives by proximity to each other that they cannot help but all get involved in each other's business . . . Perhaps a reader of this series should be someone who so enjoys the stories of Beatrix Potter that they have no problems allowing mice, rabbits, hedgehogs, and cats and dogs to be vital characters in the book. I enjoyed it immensely because it was so different and it takes the English cozy style of novel to a level I had never experienced . . . [R]ead it for the lovely descriptions of the location, the perceptive insights into life in a tiny community, and the facts regarding the life of Beatrix Potter.—J. Lesley, Amazon Vine Reviewer, Aug 1, 2012

Your turn.

Our world is increasingly and often frighteningly discordant. In times like these, I look to quiet books for relief—books that remind me that people can be thoughtful and considerate, that friendship and community is important, and that humans can choose to live in harmony with the natural world.

Do you agree? What books do you find comfortable and comforting, when life around you goes awry? Use the comment bubble below to share your thoughts.

On Saturdays, I host an informal group of readers on Facebook, where we share reading suggestions. Saturday’s thread is still open, if you’re on Facebook and would like to check it out. (Look for the post with the photo of a blue vinca blossom.) You’re very welcome to join us!