The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies

The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies

First edition cover
Author	Beatrix Potter
Illustrator	Beatrix Potter
Country	England
Language	English
Genre	Children's literature
Publisher	Frederick Warne & Co.
Publication date	July 1909
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Preceded by	The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding
Followed by	The Tale of Ginger and Pickles

The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in July 1909. After two full-length tales about rabbits, Potter had grown weary of the subject and was reluctant to write another. She realized however that children most enjoyed her rabbit stories and pictures, and so reached back to characters and plot elements from The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904) to create The Flopsy Bunnies. A semi-formal garden of archways and flowerbeds in Wales at the home of her uncle and aunt became the background for the illustrations.

In The Flopsy Bunnies, Benjamin Bunny and his cousin Flopsy are the parents of six young rabbits called simply The Flopsy Bunnies. The story concerns how the Flopsy Bunnies, while raiding a rubbish heap of rotting vegetables, fall asleep and are captured by Mr. McGregor who places them in a sack. While McGregor is distracted, the six are freed by Thomasina Tittlemouse, a woodmouse, and the sack filled with rotten vegetables by Benjamin and Flopsy. At home, Mr. McGregor proudly presents the sack to his wife, but receives a sharp scolding when she discovers its actual content.

Modern critical commentary varies. One critic points out that the faces of the rabbits are expressionless while another argues that the cock of an ear or the position of a tail conveys what the faces lack. One critic believes the tale lacks the vitality of The Tale of Peter Rabbit which sprang from a picture and story letter to a child. Most agree though that the depictions of the garden are exquisite and some of the finest illustrations Potter created.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit and its three sequels are the best known and most successful of Potter's books. The author had an affinity for rabbits; she lived with them as pets and observed them closely for years. Though she once wrote that rabbits were creatures of "warm volatile temperaments" and were "shallow and extremely transparent", she invested her rabbits with a variety of characterizations consistent with the nature of the animal. All the rabbit tales were inspired in part by Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, which Potter began illustrating as early as 1893 in an attempt to find career direction and probably because they featured a rabbit as principal player. Although she incorporated Harris's "rabbit-tobacco" and his "lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity" (as "lippity-lippity") into her literary vocabulary, she was unable to bring his characters to the English country garden as Victorian gentlemen – they remained inexorably fixed in the Antebellum American South as slaves and slave owners. Harris's wily Br'er Rabbit is motivated by vengeance and wins by cunning, but Potter's rabbits have no such motivation and succeed due to their adventurous spirit and pure luck.