Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, mycologist and conservationist who was best known for her many best-selling children’s books that featured animal characters, such as Peter Rabbit. In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children’s book The Tale of Peter Rabbit, after which she began writing and illustrating children’s books full time. Having become financially independent of her parents, she was able to buy a farm in the Lake District. Potter died in 1943, and left almost all of her property to her husband who, after his death in 1945, left it to The National Trust to preserve the beauty of the Lake District as she had known it and protect it from developers. (source: Wikipedia)