By any definition, Beatrix Potter is the least likely of the land barons in British history today. Not remembered for her incredible real estate sense, she was a shy Victorian woman who, over many years, purchased vast tracts of the Lake District in England with the money from her books, most popularly for “a rabbit in a blue jacket.” According to the National Trust, the profits from "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," along with a small inheritance, enabled her to buy Hill Top Farm in 1905; by the time she died in 1943, she had accumulated approximately 4000 acres and 15 working farms, all of which she left to the National Trust. It's almost astonishing how one children's author quietly outmaneuvered an entire century of development pressure on a landscape that other countries have struggled for decades to protect through policy alone.
A children's writer with a very grown-up way out
