The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

Peter Rabbit has lost his blue jacket — and his shoes — somewhere in Mr. McGregor's garden. His cousin Benjamin knows the way back. Together, the two cousins set out to rescue the lost clothes, sneaking past sleeping cats and keeping low to the cabbages. It is a quieter story than Peter's, and braver in its way.

Beatrix wrote it in the summer of 1903, on holiday at Fawe Park near Keswick. The garden in the book is the garden she sketched there — the cabbages, the onions, the high red wall. Frederick Warne published it in September 1904, as a sequel to Peter Rabbit. She dedicated it to "the Children of Sawrey, from Old Mr. Bunny" — the first time the village she would one day call home appeared in her work.

The original Benjamin Bunny was a real rabbit. His name was Bounce, and he was very fond of hot buttered toast. Some of him is still in these pages — somewhere between a small brave cousin and a creature who runs into the drawing room when he hears the tea-bell.