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Potter ’ s artistic and literary interests were deeply influenced by fairies, fairy tales and fantasy.
She was a student of the classic fairy tales of Western Europe.
As well as stories from the Old Testament, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, she grew up with Aesop ’ s Fables, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies, the folk tales and mythology of Scotland, the German Romantics, Shakespeare, and the romances of Sir Walter Scott.
As a young child, before the age of eight, Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense, including the much loved The Owl and the Pussycat, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland had made their impression, although she later said of Alice that she was more interested in Tenniel's illustrations than what they were about.
The Brer Rabbit stories of Joel Chandler Harris had been family favourites and she later studied his Uncle Remus stories and illustrated them.
She studied book illustration from a young age and developed her own tastes, but the work of the picture book triumvirate Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott, the last an illustrator whose work was later collected by her father, was a great influence.
When she started to illustrate, she chose first the traditional rhymes and stories, " Cinderella ", " Sleeping Beauty ", " Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves ", " Puss-in-boots ", and " Red Riding Hood ".
But most often her illustrations were fantasies featuring her own pets: mice, rabbits, kittens, and guinea pigs.

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