Beatrix Potter and the 'Timber Question'

During Beatrix Potter’s residency in the English Lake District, trees were vital to her vision for and understanding of this landscape; much more than this, for this author, arboreal stewardship was bound up with being a good landowner and citizen in this region. This article explores Potter’s views regarding, and approaches to, tree planting, felling and the caretaking of timber on her land during the interwar period of the twentieth century, and at a particular time when the cultivation and conservation of this region’s trees were of national importance. Building on this context, and through a close reading of Potter’s tale, The Fairy in the Oak (1911), this study will explore how similar arboricultural impulses can be identified in the environmental ethics of the author’s earlier, fictional, writings too.