London - Do your kids miss Peter Rabbit? Or would they like to know that he grew up into a chubby, big black cat who leads a double life?
No problem. A lost story by famed British children’s author Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots – has been discovered amongst her memorabilia and will be published this year, more than a century after she wrote it.
Jo Hanks, a publisher with Penguin Random House who made the discovery at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 2013, called the story the biggest Potter discovery in generations and almost certainly the last.
“When I was working with Emma Thompson (on The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit, published in 2014), I read a book by Leslie Linder about Beatrix Potter, and came across a reference to Kitty-in-Boots,” she told Britain’s The Bookseller. “That led me to the V&A, where many of her writings are archived.”
Hanks said she had been “idly thumbing” through the out-of-print literary history when she found a reference to a story about a “well-behaved prime black kitty cat, who leads rather a double life”, she was quoted by the Times as saying.
“The tale really is the best of Beatrix Potter,” she told the Bookseller. “It has double identities, colourful villains and a number of favourite characters from other tales – most excitingly, Peter Rabbit makes an appearance, albeit older, slower and portlier.”
The story was written in 1914, the year World War I began and Potter’s father died. The beloved children’s author had recently married and had begun a new life as a sheep farmer in Britain’s Lake District.
The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots will come out in September in Britain, the US, Canada and Australia.
The Washington Post