[1] Although Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is set in an identifiable place and time period, the tale is mythologized by reaching back to an age when household chores were performed manually and without the aid of modern mechanical inventions.

The simple dwellings, rustic pathways, and stone fences enhance the tale's timeless aspect and suggest an unchanging countryside and its way of life.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle became a popular character and the subject of considerable merchandise over the decades including nursery ware and porcelain figurines.

In 1971, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle became a character performed by Sir Frederick Ashton in The Royal Ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter.

At the table stands a short, stout person wearing a tucked-up print gown, an apron, and a striped petticoat.

The narrator tells the reader that some thought Lucie had fallen asleep on the stile and dreamed the encounter, but if so, then how could she have three clean handkerchiefs and a laundered pinafore?

The story of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was inspired by Kitty MacDonald, a Scottish washerwoman the Potters employed over the course of eleven summers at Dalguise House on the River Tay in Perthshire.

[3] (The Scots Language Centre defines "mutch" as "A head-dress, especially a close-fitting day cap of white linen or muslin…specifically such as used to be worn by married women”.

She was a tiny body, brown as a berry, beady black eyes and much wrinkled, against an incongruously white frilled mutch.

She wore a small plaid crossed over shawl pinned with a silver brooch, a bed jacket, and a full kilted petticoat.

The days when 'Boney' [Napoleon] was a terror ... the old woman wouldn't dwell upon hard weather and storms; she spoke of the sunshine and clouds, and shadows, the heather bells, ... "the broom of the Cowden Knowes", the sun and wind on the hills where she played, and knitted, and herded cattle and sheep.

A bonny life it was, but it never came back ..."[5]Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle may have been conceived as early as 1886, it was not until 1901 Potter began elaborating it while on holiday at Lingholm west of Derwentwater where she met young Kathleen and Lucie Carr, daughters of the local vicar.

[8] Potter and Warne agreed a volume of nursery rhymes would be created in 1905 but she also brought his attention to a story she had previously written, writing to him, "I think 'Mrs.

[6] In the summer of 1904, Potter again took her holiday at Lingholm, and drew pen and ink illustrations for the hedgehog book based on in watercolours made of the area the previous year.

Potter wrote to Warne on 12 November, "Mrs. Tiggy as a model is comical; so long as she can go to sleep on my knee she is delighted, but if she is propped up on end for half an hour, she first begins to yawn pathetically, and then she does bite!

[10] By February 1905, the drawings for the book sent to be converted to blocks,[11] and, in late March, she began The Pie and the Patty-Pan, the companion piece to Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

On 25 July proofs sent to her from the publisher showed spottiness that may have been caused by the summer heat affecting the chemicals used in the engraving process; the plates were re-engraved in September.

In 1971, Sir Frederick Ashton performed the role of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in The Royal Ballet film The Tales of Beatrix Potter, which he also choreographed.

Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle writes Master Fayle warning him that "[e]verything has got all mixed up in wrong bundles" and wondering if he has received Mr. Jeremy Fisher's shirt or Mrs. Flopsy Bunny's apron?

The tale is held together, she asserts, by its attractive central character, and points out that, like many girls' books of the period, it is set indoors and revolves around household chores and duties.

MacDonald points out that Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is the first of Potter's books to depict a countryside of simple dwellings, pathways, stone fences, and the timeless, unchanging ways of rural life.

The notion of having animals shed their skins for laundering provides opportunities for amusing illustrations, but the tale does not have a strong narrative line to hold it together or to grip the reader's attention.

[21] Literary scholar Humphrey Carpenter writes in Secret Gardens The Golden Age of Children's Literature that Potter's work shows thematic shifts, seeing in The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle a utopian theme of nature-as-redemption in which the background represents a return to Arcadia of sorts.

[22] Potter asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the "longevity of her books comes from strategy", writes her biographer Ruth MacDonald.

[23] Potter was the first to exploit the commercial possibilities of her characters and tales; between 1903 and 1905 these included a Peter Rabbit stuffed toy, an unpublished board game, and nursery wallpaper.

[27] In 1947, Frederick Warne & Co. granted Beswick Pottery of Longton, Staffordshire "rights and licences to produce" the Potter characters in porcelain.

Between 1985 and 1999 Beswick produced five more porcelain collectibles featuring the hedgehog, including her head as a mug in 1988, a larger version of the first figurine in 1996, and a limited edition tableau showing Lucie and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in 1999.

In the early 1970s Frederick Warne & Co. granted a licence for plush toys to an English firm, House of Nesbit Ltd., which produced seven characters, including Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.

Eden produced a plush Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in 1974, and made at least three other versions of the hedgehog over the years, including an 18-inch (46 cm) "Giant" model, originally intended for display in stores.

[35] In 1979, Wedgwood produced a 16-piece Queen's Ware nursery set; each piece was decorated with artwork and accompanying text from The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.