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.

In 1903, Potter and her publisher decided her next book should be less complicated than her previous productions, and in Benjamin Bunny she created a simple, didactic tale for young children.

The book's masterful illustrations were based upon the several gardens at the Lake District estate of Fawe Park, where Potter spent the summer of 1903.

She was sensitive to the openings and endings of her books, and insisted Benjamin Bunny finish with the words "rabbit-tobacco", a term she appropriated from the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, one of her literary heroes.

Benjamin goes to visit his cousin Peter Rabbit, who lives with his family in a burrow under a large tree at the end of the woods near Mr. McGregor’s garden.

However, when he gets to his family's home, he decides not to ask his Aunt Josephine or other cousins Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-Tail where Peter is due to not being overly fond of them.

After locking the cat in the greenhouse, he finds his son Benjamin and nephew Peter and is glad they are safe and unharmed, however is furious they left him worried and whips both Rabbits very hard, making them cry.

Following his return to the garden, Mr. McGregor is puzzled by the ridiculously small footprints, the scarecrow's missing clothes and the cat locked in the greenhouse.

All the tales were in part inspired by Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, which Potter illustrated as early as 1893 in an attempt to find a career direction.

[2] In July 1903, Potter suggested to her publisher, Frederick Warne & Co. that the book to follow The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester ought to be something less complex than the two previous productions.

[4][5] Benjamin Bunny had been mentioned in the manuscript of the privately printed edition of Peter Rabbit but had been dropped as irrelevant to the tale.

[11] Many of the sketches from her Fawe Park holiday were little altered in their migration to the book,[12] and, upon completion of the work, Potter declared she was relieved to be finished with the rabbits.

Her meticulous preparation before finalizing an illustration was noted in a letter to Warne: "I think I have done every imaginable rabbit background and miscellaneous sketches as well – about seventy!

Scribbled or not, the work is of the highest quality with the sketches of onions and red carnations (which were dropped as the frontispiece) being chief examples.

The tale was well received by The Scotsman,[15] but The Times Literary Supplement was not entirely enthusiastic:Among the little books that have become as much a manifestation of autumn as falling leaves, one looks first for whatever Miss Beatrix Potter gives ...

[1]Potter biographer Linda Lear notes that none of the rabbit books subsequent to Peter Rabbit appealed to Potter with the passion she experienced for the original, but, in Benjamin Bunny, she successfully wrote a simple, didactic tale for very young children that was less complicated than The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tailor of Gloucester.

Benjamin Bunny however lacked the vitality of her previous efforts because it was made to order rather than allowed to flower from a picture letter to real children in the manner of Peter Rabbit and Squirrel Nutkin.