Sunday, September 09, 2012

How Emma Watson Came to Write a Peter Rabbit Tale


The Telegraph has the details, here.

From the article...

“It was such a witty invitation,” Thompson tells me, “and it was very clever because in a sense I was completely tricked.” She laughs in that familiar warm and spontaneous way. 
“If Frederick Warne,” – the publisher of the Peter Rabbit stories – “had sent some official letter I would have said don’t be ridiculous, I can’t think of anything I want to do less than step into the footsteps of a genius like Potter.” But the publisher’s sweetly cunning ploy worked, and next week sees the publication of The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit by Emma Thompson, published for the 110th anniversary of the book’s original publication. 
The story has a nice symmetry with the way in which Beatrix Potter first created her animal stories. In September 1893 Potter heard that Noel Moore, the young son of her ex-governess, was unwell. To cheer him up she sent him a letter with the story of Peter Rabbit who, unlike his goody-goody siblings Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, disobeys his mother and breaks into Mr McGregor’s garden.

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