The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
Encyclopedia
The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter
and first published by Frederick Warne & Co
. in August 1903
. The story is about an impertinent red squirrel
named Nutkin and his narrow escape from an owl called Old Brown. The book followed Potter's hugely successful The Tale of Peter Rabbit
, and was an instant hit. The now familiar endpapers of the Peter Rabbit series were introduced in the book.
Squirrel Nutkin had its origins in a story and picture letter Potter sent Norah Moore, the daughter of her former governess, Annie Carter Moore. The background illustrations were modelled on Derwentwater and St. Herbert's Island in the Lake District
.
One commentator has likened Squirrel Nutkin's impertinent behaviour to that of the rebellious working-class of Potter's own day, and another commentator has noted the tale's similarities to pourquoi tale
s and folk tales in its explanations of Squirrel Nutkin's short tail and characteristics of squirrel behaviour. An abbreviated version of the tale appeared as a segment in the 1971 ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter
.
and from there sent a story and picture letter about a red squirrel colony in Cumberland to Norah Moore, the daughter of her former governess, Annie Moore. The letter was an elaboration of an earlier one sent to Norah’s brother Noel about some American squirrels rafting down a river using their tails as sails. She copied Norah’s story into an exercise book, and spent the summer sketching squirrels, the landscape around Lingholm, and St Herbert's Island which would eventually become Owl Island in Squirrel Nutkin.Formerly the isolated home of the anchorite
monk Herbert of Derwentwater
(d. 20 March 687), St Herbert's Island lies in the centre of Derwentwater south of Keswick, Cumbria
(Palmer 169). Remains of a circular stone building at the centre of the island may be the monk’s cell, and, from the mainland, monks would set forth from Friar’s Craig to visit Herbert’s island hermitage (Rees 179). Potter sketched and photographed the island from both sides of the lake, from the shores at Lingholm, and from the fells on the opposite side of the lake. The island and its surroundings can be accurately identified from Potter's illustrations. Potter photographed Old Brown’s gnarled tree and the forest detritus in black and white. The tree stood for many years after Potter's visit (Lear 2007, p. 161).
The success of the privately printed edition of Peter Rabbit in 1901, and the certainty of its future release as a trade edition by Warne, stimulated a period of great creativity in Potter, and she proposed at least three new books to Warne between the summer of 1901 and Christmas 1902. She enjoyed working on two or three story ideas at the same time, and, in December 1902, privately printed a tale about a poor tailor and the mice in his shop called The Tailor of Gloucester
. In November 1902, a month before the private printing of The Tailor, she gave her publisher Norman Warne
a version of her squirrel book; he liked the story but thought it was too long and contained too many riddles. He encouraged her to continue the squirrel drawings.
In January 1903, she wrote to a former neighbour that she was busy writing a tale about squirrels, and told the grandchildren of Edward Burne-Jones
that she was drawing a little squirrel at home. She had built the animal a house from a soap box and had hung it in a large birdcage so she could observe and sketch the animal at any hour. She tried to improve her drawings of Nutkin’s nemesis, Old Brown, by sketching owls at the London Zoological Gardens.
Warne published The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in August 1903 with a run of 10,000 deluxe edition copies bound in an elaborate pansy-dotted fabric Potter personally selected and described as "a flowered lavender chintz, very pretty". Full-coloured endpapers were introduced in the books (against Potter’s better judgement) that depicted her storybook characters in a chain bordering the edges of the papers. Warne was delighted with the commercial potential of the endpapers as new characters hinting at titles to come could be worked into the design at any time.
Scholar M. Daphne Kutzer points out that The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, like its companion piece, The Tailor of Gloucester
, reflects Potter's interest in fairy tales, rhymes, and riddles, and sheds light on her embedded social and political themes. Like The Tailor, the tale is set in a locale dear to Potter’s heart. Unlike The Tailor (but more akin to The Tale of Peter Rabbit
), Squirrel Nutkin is about rebellion and its consequences.
The fairy tale connection in Squirrel Nutkin is less obvious than in The Tailor which more closely resembles a Grimm Brothers tale such as "The Shoemaker and the Elves". In Squirrel Nutkin nevertheless, Potter employs several fairy tale motifs and narrative techniques, as well as an echo of Aesop’s Fables. Potter's tale, like many fairy tales, has a rural setting with a threatening figure living at the centre of a wood, and depends a good deal upon repetition: the squirrels arrive on Old Brown’s island on six consecutive days, they present an offering of food to the owl on each of those six days, and at each presentation Nutkin taunts Old Brown with a sing-song riddle that suggests the repetitive rhymes or incantations found in fairy tales such as the chant to the mirror in "Snow White
". Potter ends her tale, however, in a very non-traditional way: Nutkin is caught and punished rather than being required to complete a series of tasks or to outwit an antagonist. The author further breaks the traditional fairy tale mould by tacitly inviting her readers to solve the riddles—a task typically reserved for the fairy tale hero.The solutions to the riddles are embedded in the text following each, gently emphasised in italics.
Like Peter Rabbit and The Tailor, food is central to the plot in Squirrel Nutkin: the squirrels gather nuts for food, and they bring food (dead mice, moles, and minnows among other things) as offerings to Old Brown. Ironically, the squirrels need the nuts in Old Brown’s domain but are in danger of being eaten by him. They bring the old owl foodstuffs to deflect his attention from their presence as potential meals. Issues of class structure and hierarchy play out in Potter’s work and Squirrel Nutkin is not exempt: the squirrels lay their offerings at Old Brown’s feet and address him with formal politeness to secure his permission to gather nuts. They thus appear as "obedient, obsequious servants of a ruler". Unlike Peter Rabbit, there are no humans in Squirrel Nutkin but there is still a sense of hierarchy, class, and power, and a desire to overturn it. Old Brown resembles the nineteenth century landowner to whom everything on the land belongs. To take it without permission was to poach and thus to invite severe penalty for poaching
was not only a violation of land and property but of sovereignty as well.
Nutkin however will have nothing of squirrel work, obeisance to Old Brown or of appeasement. He taunts Old Brown, heedless of the consequences. His behaviour stands in stark contrast to the other squirrels who willingly play by Old Brown’s rules. Nutkin's behaviour is not only that of a disobedient child but that of the rebellious working-class people of Potter's own day.
Squirrel Nutkin shares some of the immediacy of the storytelling in Peter Rabbit, and that immediacy is attributed to the origins of both tales in picture and story letters for real children. Unlike Peter Rabbit's tale however, that of Squirrel Nutkin is a story about a very distinct place: the shores of Derwentwater and its environs. Squirrel Nutkin was embellished not only with Potter's favourite riddles and rhymes, but with a local legend about squirrels appearing on St Herbert's Island just when the nuts were ripe. The tale falls into the category of pourquoi tales
as it explains why Nutkin's tail is shorter than those of other squirrels. The folk tale is suggested in the secret of squirrel language and the reasons they throw nuts at each other and at humans.
The tale differs significantly from Peter Rabbit in that the characters do not wear clothes and are only minimally anthropomorphized through their human-like behaviour. The squirrels live in their accurately drawn natural habitat, but Nutkin dances on his hind legs while the other characters behave like real animals. In Squirrel Nutkin, Potter approaches more closely than in any of her other books the kind of natural history writing that was popular in her day in which a story conveyed accurate information about the natural world to young readers. While the tale succeeds in this way, Nutkin is not as sympathetic a character as Peter for he is unapologetically rude to Old Brown and is fortunate to escape with only a shorter tail. Though the number of riddles were cut during the editorial process, the quality of the writing and the narrative pace nonetheless suffer from the many riddle interruptions of those retained. Potter did not shy away from depicting the violence of nature in the book, knowing it appealed to children. A surreal element exists in the tale with it being the first to make evident Potter’s sense of the sardonic.
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...
and first published by Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co
Frederick Warne & Co was a British publishing firm famous for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter. It was founded in 1865 by a bookseller, who gave his own name to the firm.- History :...
. in August 1903
1903 in literature
The year 1903 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* October 24 - Mark Twain moves to Florence.* The first Goncourt Prize for French literature is awarded to John Antoine Nau....
. The story is about an impertinent red squirrel
Red Squirrel
The red squirrel or Eurasian red squirrel is a species of tree squirrel in the genus Sciurus common throughout Eurasia...
named Nutkin and his narrow escape from an owl called Old Brown. The book followed Potter's hugely successful The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother who puts him to bed after dosing him with camomile tea...
, and was an instant hit. The now familiar endpapers of the Peter Rabbit series were introduced in the book.
Squirrel Nutkin had its origins in a story and picture letter Potter sent Norah Moore, the daughter of her former governess, Annie Carter Moore. The background illustrations were modelled on Derwentwater and St. Herbert's Island in the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
.
One commentator has likened Squirrel Nutkin's impertinent behaviour to that of the rebellious working-class of Potter's own day, and another commentator has noted the tale's similarities to pourquoi tale
Pourquoi story
A pourquoi story, also known as an origin story or an etiological tale, is a fictional narrative that explains why something is the way it is, for example why a snake has no legs, or why a tiger has stripes...
s and folk tales in its explanations of Squirrel Nutkin's short tail and characteristics of squirrel behaviour. An abbreviated version of the tale appeared as a segment in the 1971 ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter
The Tales of Beatrix Potter
Tales of Beatrix Potter is a 1971 ballet film with a plot based on the children's stories of English author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. The film was directed by Reginald Mills, choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton , and starred artists of the Royal Ballet...
.
Plot
Squirrel Nutkin, his brother Twinkleberry, and their many cousins sail to Owl Island on little rafts they have constructed of twigs. They offer resident owl Old Brown a gift and ask his permission to do their nut-collecting on his island. Nutkin however dances about impertinently singing a silly riddle. Old Brown pays no attention to Nutkin, but permits the squirrels to go about their work. Every day for six days, the squirrels offer gifts to Old Brown, and every day as well, Nutkin taunts the owl with another sing-song riddle. Eventually, Nutkin annoys Old Brown once too often. The owl seizes Nutkin and tries to skin him alive. Nutkin escapes, but not without losing most of his tail.Composition and publication
In 1901, Potter passed her summer holiday at the country estate of Lingholm in the Lake DistrictLake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
and from there sent a story and picture letter about a red squirrel colony in Cumberland to Norah Moore, the daughter of her former governess, Annie Moore. The letter was an elaboration of an earlier one sent to Norah’s brother Noel about some American squirrels rafting down a river using their tails as sails. She copied Norah’s story into an exercise book, and spent the summer sketching squirrels, the landscape around Lingholm, and St Herbert's Island which would eventually become Owl Island in Squirrel Nutkin.Formerly the isolated home of the anchorite
Anchorite
Anchorite denotes someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, and—circumstances permitting—Eucharist-focused life...
monk Herbert of Derwentwater
Herbert of Derwentwater
Saint Herbert of Derwentwater was a priest and hermit who lived on St Herbert's Island, a small island in Derwentwater.-Biography:...
(d. 20 March 687), St Herbert's Island lies in the centre of Derwentwater south of Keswick, Cumbria
Keswick, Cumbria
Keswick is a market town and civil parish within the Borough of Allerdale in Cumbria, England. It had a population of 4,984, according to the 2001 census, and is situated just north of Derwent Water, and a short distance from Bassenthwaite Lake, both in the Lake District National Park...
(Palmer 169). Remains of a circular stone building at the centre of the island may be the monk’s cell, and, from the mainland, monks would set forth from Friar’s Craig to visit Herbert’s island hermitage (Rees 179). Potter sketched and photographed the island from both sides of the lake, from the shores at Lingholm, and from the fells on the opposite side of the lake. The island and its surroundings can be accurately identified from Potter's illustrations. Potter photographed Old Brown’s gnarled tree and the forest detritus in black and white. The tree stood for many years after Potter's visit (Lear 2007, p. 161).
The success of the privately printed edition of Peter Rabbit in 1901, and the certainty of its future release as a trade edition by Warne, stimulated a period of great creativity in Potter, and she proposed at least three new books to Warne between the summer of 1901 and Christmas 1902. She enjoyed working on two or three story ideas at the same time, and, in December 1902, privately printed a tale about a poor tailor and the mice in his shop called The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, privately printed by the author in 1902, and published in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1903...
. In November 1902, a month before the private printing of The Tailor, she gave her publisher Norman Warne
Norman Warne
Norman Dalziel Warne was the third son of publisher Frederick Warne, and joined his father's firm Frederick Warne & Co. as editor. In 1900 the company rejected Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but eventually reconsidered and published the book in October 1902 to great success...
a version of her squirrel book; he liked the story but thought it was too long and contained too many riddles. He encouraged her to continue the squirrel drawings.
In January 1903, she wrote to a former neighbour that she was busy writing a tale about squirrels, and told the grandchildren of Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
that she was drawing a little squirrel at home. She had built the animal a house from a soap box and had hung it in a large birdcage so she could observe and sketch the animal at any hour. She tried to improve her drawings of Nutkin’s nemesis, Old Brown, by sketching owls at the London Zoological Gardens.
Warne published The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin in August 1903 with a run of 10,000 deluxe edition copies bound in an elaborate pansy-dotted fabric Potter personally selected and described as "a flowered lavender chintz, very pretty". Full-coloured endpapers were introduced in the books (against Potter’s better judgement) that depicted her storybook characters in a chain bordering the edges of the papers. Warne was delighted with the commercial potential of the endpapers as new characters hinting at titles to come could be worked into the design at any time.
Critical response
Squirrel Nutkin was an instant success. The publisher received amusing and enthusiastic letters from young readers, which were forwarded to Potter. She was pleased with the success of the book and wrote to Norman Warne, "I am delighted to hear such a good account of Nutkin. I never thought when drawing it that it would be such a success – though I think you always had a good opinion of it."Scholar M. Daphne Kutzer points out that The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, like its companion piece, The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, privately printed by the author in 1902, and published in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1903...
, reflects Potter's interest in fairy tales, rhymes, and riddles, and sheds light on her embedded social and political themes. Like The Tailor, the tale is set in a locale dear to Potter’s heart. Unlike The Tailor (but more akin to The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he is chased about the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother who puts him to bed after dosing him with camomile tea...
), Squirrel Nutkin is about rebellion and its consequences.
The fairy tale connection in Squirrel Nutkin is less obvious than in The Tailor which more closely resembles a Grimm Brothers tale such as "The Shoemaker and the Elves". In Squirrel Nutkin nevertheless, Potter employs several fairy tale motifs and narrative techniques, as well as an echo of Aesop’s Fables. Potter's tale, like many fairy tales, has a rural setting with a threatening figure living at the centre of a wood, and depends a good deal upon repetition: the squirrels arrive on Old Brown’s island on six consecutive days, they present an offering of food to the owl on each of those six days, and at each presentation Nutkin taunts Old Brown with a sing-song riddle that suggests the repetitive rhymes or incantations found in fairy tales such as the chant to the mirror in "Snow White
Snow White
"Snow White" is a fairy tale known from many countries in Europe, the best known version being the German one collected by the Brothers Grimm...
". Potter ends her tale, however, in a very non-traditional way: Nutkin is caught and punished rather than being required to complete a series of tasks or to outwit an antagonist. The author further breaks the traditional fairy tale mould by tacitly inviting her readers to solve the riddles—a task typically reserved for the fairy tale hero.The solutions to the riddles are embedded in the text following each, gently emphasised in italics.
Like Peter Rabbit and The Tailor, food is central to the plot in Squirrel Nutkin: the squirrels gather nuts for food, and they bring food (dead mice, moles, and minnows among other things) as offerings to Old Brown. Ironically, the squirrels need the nuts in Old Brown’s domain but are in danger of being eaten by him. They bring the old owl foodstuffs to deflect his attention from their presence as potential meals. Issues of class structure and hierarchy play out in Potter’s work and Squirrel Nutkin is not exempt: the squirrels lay their offerings at Old Brown’s feet and address him with formal politeness to secure his permission to gather nuts. They thus appear as "obedient, obsequious servants of a ruler". Unlike Peter Rabbit, there are no humans in Squirrel Nutkin but there is still a sense of hierarchy, class, and power, and a desire to overturn it. Old Brown resembles the nineteenth century landowner to whom everything on the land belongs. To take it without permission was to poach and thus to invite severe penalty for poaching
Poaching
Poaching is the illegal taking of wild plants or animals contrary to local and international conservation and wildlife management laws. Violations of hunting laws and regulations are normally punishable by law and, collectively, such violations are known as poaching.It may be illegal and in...
was not only a violation of land and property but of sovereignty as well.
Squirrel Nutkin shares some of the immediacy of the storytelling in Peter Rabbit, and that immediacy is attributed to the origins of both tales in picture and story letters for real children. Unlike Peter Rabbit's tale however, that of Squirrel Nutkin is a story about a very distinct place: the shores of Derwentwater and its environs. Squirrel Nutkin was embellished not only with Potter's favourite riddles and rhymes, but with a local legend about squirrels appearing on St Herbert's Island just when the nuts were ripe. The tale falls into the category of pourquoi tales
Pourquoi story
A pourquoi story, also known as an origin story or an etiological tale, is a fictional narrative that explains why something is the way it is, for example why a snake has no legs, or why a tiger has stripes...
as it explains why Nutkin's tail is shorter than those of other squirrels. The folk tale is suggested in the secret of squirrel language and the reasons they throw nuts at each other and at humans.
The tale differs significantly from Peter Rabbit in that the characters do not wear clothes and are only minimally anthropomorphized through their human-like behaviour. The squirrels live in their accurately drawn natural habitat, but Nutkin dances on his hind legs while the other characters behave like real animals. In Squirrel Nutkin, Potter approaches more closely than in any of her other books the kind of natural history writing that was popular in her day in which a story conveyed accurate information about the natural world to young readers. While the tale succeeds in this way, Nutkin is not as sympathetic a character as Peter for he is unapologetically rude to Old Brown and is fortunate to escape with only a shorter tail. Though the number of riddles were cut during the editorial process, the quality of the writing and the narrative pace nonetheless suffer from the many riddle interruptions of those retained. Potter did not shy away from depicting the violence of nature in the book, knowing it appealed to children. A surreal element exists in the tale with it being the first to make evident Potter’s sense of the sardonic.
External links
- The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Visiting Cumbria: Photographs of Lingholm, Derwent Water, and environs
- The Riddles of Squirrel Nutkin from Lyndie Chiou's children's book and music blog.