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 among 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, the London Times Newspaper reported Tuesday.
“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, which covers the publishing industry. “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.
By Daniela Deane, WashingtonPost.com, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Jan. 26, 2016
