In 1905, Beatrix Potter used Peter Rabbit royalties to buy threatened farmland in UK; the result protected 4,000 acres and 14 farms, preserving the Lake District’s working countryside

When Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top Farm in 1905, she was doing much more than investing her book royalties. She was starting a quiet, decades-long campaign to protect the English landscape from encroaching commercial development. Over the next thirty-eight years, the author used her publishing wealth to buy up vulnerable farmland across the Lake District. She steadily outmaneuvered developers who wanted to build over the region's rolling hills and valleys. By her death in 1943, she had secured over...