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This article is about the Peter Rabbit character. For other people, see McGregor (surname).
Fictional character
Mr. John McGregor
Mr. McGregor in an illustration from The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)
Mr. John McGregor is a fictional character in Peter Rabbit series of children's books written by author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. He is an elderly Scottish horticulturalist intent upon keeping the rabbits out of his vegetable garden and occasionally attempting to catch them to put them in a pie and eat them. Potter denied the character was based on a real person but her mentor in mycology, Charles McIntosh, may have been the inspiration for McGregor's physical appearance and her landlord in 1893, Atholl McGregor, may have been the source for the character's name. Mr. McGregor appeared in two episodes of an animated BBC television series based on Potter's books in 1992.
Background
On 4 September 1893, Beatrix Potter addressed a story and picture letter to Noel Moore, the five-year-old son of her former governess Annie Carter Moore. The letter told of a humanised lagomorph called Peter Rabbit and his adventure in Mr. McGregor's garden. In the following years, Potter continued to send story and picture letters to Noel and his siblings.
Mrs. Moore recognised their literary and artistic value and urged the author to publish them. Potter borrowed the original Peter Rabbit letter from Noel, copied it out, and developed the tale. Attempts to find a publisher for the tale were unsuccessful, and Potter privately published the tale to great success among family and friends.
In 1902, Frederick Warne & Co. expressed their interest in the tale, persuaded Potter to colour the illustrations, and published the book in October 1902. The book was wildly popular and Potter's career as a children's author and illustrator was launched.
Sources
In 1940, Potter wrote, "I never knew a gardener named 'Mr. McGregor'. Several bearded horticulturalists have resented the nickname; but I do not know how it came about". In a letter of February 1942 to her publisher, Potter claimed McGregor "was no special person",[1] but she may have taken inspiration for the fictional character from two different men of her acquaintance: Atholl McGregor and Charlie McIntosh.
Atholl McGregor was a minor laird who sublet Eastwood, a large dower house at Dunkeld, Scotland belonging to the Duke of Atholl, to the Potters for their summer holiday of 1893.[2] He would likely have been about the place some time during the last days of their occupancy when Potter wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit on 4 September for child friend Noel Moore. Her fictional character's deerstalker cap and sleeveless waistcoat are the sorts of garments a minor laird would have worn to advertise his status.[3]
Potter's fellow mycologist and mentor Charlie McIntosh was examining rare fungi in the grass at Eastwood on the day before the Peter Rabbit letter was written. His thin face, rimless spectacles, and flowing white beard were more than likely the models for those of the fictional McGregor.[4] In Pierre Lapin (1921), the first French edition of the tale, McGregor became "Mac Grégor".[3]
Books
Mr. McGregor is an elderly gardener who makes his first appearance in The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902). He was originally intended to share title honours with Peter. Potter's manuscript title was The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor's Garden but McGregor and his garden were dropped when Potter privately published the book in 1901.[5]
In the tale, Peter's mother has forbidden her four children to enter McGregor's garden (their father met his end there and was made into a pie by Mrs. McGregor) but Peter does so once his mother leaves on an errand for the bakery. McGregor chases Peter about the garden but Peter escapes after losing his jacket and shoes. McGregor dresses a scarecrow with Peter's clothing.
McGregor next appears in the sequel, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904). Peter returns to McGregor's garden with his cousin Benjamin to retrieve his jacket and shoes. McGregor has a small role in the tale and appears only in the closing pages where he is mystified by tiny footprints in the garden, the disappearance of the scarecrow's clothes, and a cat locked in his greenhouse. In spite of his limited role in the action, the effect that he had in the previous story makes Peter very nervous about staying in the garden for too long, though it is McGregor's cat who almost seals the bunnies' doom.
In The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909) McGregor has a substantial role in the story and is even given some dialogue. Finding the six sleeping children of the adult Benjamin Bunny, he puts them in a sack and makes plans to sell them for tobacco. His wife, however, wants to skin them and line her cloak with their fur. The two are disappointed in their plans when they discover the bunnies have escaped the sack and have been replaced with old vegetables and a brush.
Mrs. McGregor
Mrs. McGregor appears (or is mentioned) in the same three books as her husband. In The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the reader learns Mrs. McGregor baked Peter's father in a pie some time before the story opens. Potter created two illustrations of Mrs. McGregor – one, aged and one, youthful – for the first trade edition of the tale. Her publisher rejected the aged portrait and published the youthful Mrs. McGregor (which Potter hinted in 1939 was a caricature of herself). The aged portrait survived three early printings until the fourth printing of 1903 when it was dropped altogether to make way for illustrated endpapers.[6]
In the 2002 edition from publisher Frederick Warne, the youthful portrait of Mrs. McGregor was returned to the tale opposite the text, "Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." Behind the youthful Mrs. McGregor is a child holding a spoon and at her left hand is a black dog. Three other illustrations dropped in 1903 for the endpapers were also returned to the tale in the 2002 edition.
In Benjamin Bunny, Mrs. McGregor leaves home in her best bonnet to ride in a gig driven by Mr. McGregor. In The Flopsy Bunnies, she wants to skin the bunnies to line her old cloak with their fur and scolds her husband when she discovers the bunnies have escaped. Her back appears in the 23rd illustration of The Flopsy Bunnies.
Adaptations
Jerry Verno portrayed Mr. McGregor in a dramatised series of Beatrix Potter tales produced by Fiona Bentley and recorded by HMV Junior Record Club (words by David Croft, music by Cyril Ornadel), recorded in 1959, issued, released, and published in 1959-1960, re-released in 1961-1971.[7]
In HBO's 1991 animated musical adaptation of The Tale of Peter Rabbit (under their Storybook Musicals banner), Mr. McGregor was voiced by Kevin Clash.[8]
More recently, Mr. McGregor has appeared frequently in the CBeebiesCGI-animated TV series Peter Rabbit. He is voiced by Dave Mitchell in the series, but his face and upper body are usually kept offscreen.
Mr. McGregor also appears in the 2018 film adaptation of Peter Rabbit, portrayed by Sam Neill. He is shown in the beginning of the film, where he dies of a heart attack before he can make Peter into a pie. Soon after, his great nephew, Thomas McGregor (Domhnall Gleeson), inherits his country home. The flashbacks show old McGregor eating unhealthy food because of his wife's death.
Related Research Articles
Helen Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Peter Rabbit is a fictional animal character in various children's stories by Beatrix Potter. He first appeared in The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902, and subsequently in five more books between 1904 and 1912. Spin-off merchandise includes dishes, wallpaper, and dolls. He appears as a character in several adaptations.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he gets into, and is chased around, the garden of Mr. McGregor. He escapes and returns home to his mother, who puts him to bed after offering him chamomile tea. The tale was written for five-year-old Noel Moore, the son of Potter's former governess, Annie Carter Moore, in 1893. It was revised and privately printed by Potter in 1901 after several publishers' rejections, but was printed in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1902. The book was a success, and multiple reprints were issued in the years immediately following its debut. It has been translated into 36 languages, and with 45 million copies sold it is one of the best-selling books in history.
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.
The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher is a children's book, written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was published by Frederick Warne & Co. in July 1906. Jeremy's origin lies in a letter she wrote to a child in 1893. She revised it in 1906, and moved its setting from the River Tay to the English Lake District. The tale reflects her love for the Lake District and her admiration for children's illustrator Randolph Caldecott.
The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1910. The tale is about housekeeping and insect pests in the home, and reflects Potter's own sense of tidiness and her abhorrence of insect infestations. The character of Mrs. Thomasina Tittlemouse debuted in 1909 in a small but crucial role in The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies, and Potter decided to give her a tale of her own the following year. Her meticulous illustrations of the insects may have been drawn for their own sake, or to provoke horror and disgust in her juvenile readers. 25,000 copies of the tale were initially released in July 1910 and another 15,000 between November 1910 and November 1911 in Potter's typical small book format.
The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1905. Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog washerwoman (laundress) who lives in a tiny cottage in the fells of the Lake District. A human child named Lucie happens upon the cottage and stays for tea. The two deliver freshly laundered clothing to the animals and birds in the neighbourhood. Potter thought the book would be best enjoyed by girls, and, like most girls' books of the period, it is set indoors with a focus on housework.
The Tale of Mr. Tod is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1912. The tale is about a badger called Tommy Brock and his arch enemy Mr. Tod, a fox. Brock kidnaps the children of Benjamin Bunny and his wife Flopsy, intending to eat them, and hides them in an oven in the home of Mr. Tod. Benjamin and his cousin Peter Rabbit have followed Tommy Brock in an attempt to rescue the babies. When Mr. Tod finds Brock asleep in his bed, he determines to get him out of the house. His initial attempt fails, and the two eventually come to blows. Under cover of the fight, the rabbits rescue the baby rabbits. The tale was influenced by the Uncle Remus stories, and was set in the fields of Potter's Castle Farm. Black and white illustrations outnumber those in colour. The tale is critically considered one of Potter's "most complex and successful in plot and tone."
The Tale of the Pie and the Patty-Pan is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published by Frederick Warne & Co. in October 1905. It tells of a cat called Ribby and a tea party she holds for a dog called Duchess. Complications arise when Duchess tries to replace Ribby's mouse pie with her own veal and ham pie, and then believes she has swallowed a small tin pastry form called a patty-pan. Its themes are etiquette and social relations in a small town.
The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends is a British animated anthology television series based on the works of Beatrix Potter, featuring Peter Rabbit and other anthropomorphic animal characters created by Potter. 14 of Potter's stories were adapted into 9 films, and the series was originally shown in the U.K. on the BBC between 20 December 1992 and 25 December 1998. It was subsequently broadcast in the U.S. on Family Channel between 23 October 1992 and 23 October 1995. For the initial VHS releases, some of the characters' voices were dubbed-over by actors with more American-like accents.
Flopsy is a common name for pet rabbits, but may specifically refer to:
The Tale of Benjamin Bunny is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. The book is a sequel to The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), and tells of Peter's return to Mr. McGregor's garden with his cousin Benjamin to retrieve the clothes he lost there during his previous adventure. In Benjamin Bunny, Potter deepened the rabbit universe she created in Peter Rabbit, and, in doing so, suggested the rabbit world was parallel to the human world but complete and sufficient unto itself.
Frederick Warne & Co. is a British publisher founded in 1865. It is known for children's books, particularly those of Beatrix Potter, and for its Observer's Books.
Peter Rabbit is a computer-animated comedy television series for preschool children that debuted on Nick Jr. on December 14, 2012, in the United States and on the CBeebies channel and BBC One on December 25, 2012, in the United Kingdom. It is based on the character of the same name from Beatrix Potter's books for children. The series debuted on American TV and iTunes on December 14, 2012, with the pilot episode debuting as a Christmas holiday special, titled Peter Rabbit's Christmas Tale, and the show was becoming a regular series on February 19, 2013, in the USA. which was watched by three million viewers in the U.S. The first official DVD of Peter Rabbit was released on May 28, 2013, as a Walmart exclusive. it contains the programmes first eight episodes on a single disc. On October 11, 2013, Nickelodeon ordered a second series of 26 episodes. The series is also on the BBC Alba channel known as Peadar Kinnen. In Wales the series is known as Guto Gwningen dubbed into Welsh on S4C.
Peter Rabbit is a 2018 3D live-action/computer-animated comedy film based upon the character of the same name created by Beatrix Potter, directed by Will Gluck, and co-written by Gluck and Rob Lieber. James Corden stars as the voice of the title character, with Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, and Sam Neill in live-action roles, as well as the voices of Daisy Ridley, Elizabeth Debicki, and Margot Robbie. The film's story focuses on Peter Rabbit as he deals with new problems when the late Mr. McGregor's great nephew arrives and discovers the trouble Peter's family can get into.
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