a fierce bad rabbit

I just bet you know what THAT is. That's one of the original Beatrix Potter tales.

There's a movie being made now about Miss Potter, with Renee Zellweger and Ewan Macgregor (what, has the tarnish quite gone off his bad boy image? "Velvet Goldmine," anybody?).

So was Beatrix Potter the coy, rosy, soft creature one might think with that casting? No. She had grown up the product of a typically lonely and sterile British middle-class Victorian upbringing, not allowed to leave the house much less by herself for most of her young womanhood, and was self-reliant to a fierce degree.

She never had kids of her own, though she was fond of others', and it was in letters to these young friends-and-relations that Peter Rabbit (her own pet bunny) and the rest of his kind had their genesis. She was suited to bring them so boldly to life: they had been her only friends and companions for much of her childhood. Her books are still classics today, and I venture to say always will be, and are rarely equalled in pet-literature for their clever, simple beauty and feeling.

Hey, Peter Rabbit dot com here!