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.

The story concerns how the Flopsy Bunnies, while raiding a rubbish heap of rotting vegetables, fall asleep and are captured by Mr. McGregor who places them in a sack.

While McGregor is distracted, the six are freed by Thomasina Tittlemouse, a woodmouse, and the sack is filled with rotten vegetables by Benjamin and Flopsy.

At home, Mr. McGregor proudly presents the sack to his wife, but receives a sharp scolding when she discovers its actual content.

[1] Helen Beatrix Potter was born in Kensington, London on 28 July 1866 to wealthy parents, and educated at home by a series of governesses and tutors.

She displayed artistic talent early, drawing and sketching mammals, insects, reptiles and amphibians, flowers and plants.

She sent him the text of The Faithful Dove, a tale set in Rye she had composed years earlier and for which she had produced a group of sketches.

[11] One day they find and feast on lettuces that have shot into flower, and, under their "soporific" influence, fall asleep in the rubbish heap, though Benjamin puts a sack over his head.

Benjamin and Flopsy are unable to help their children, but a "resourceful" wood mouse called Thomasina Tittlemouse, gnaws a hole in the sack and the bunnies escape.

[11] Scholar M. Daphne Kutzer points out that Mr. McGregor's role is larger in The Flopsy Bunnies than in the two previous rabbit books, but he inspires less fear in The Flopsy Bunnies than in Peter Rabbit because his role as fearsome antagonist is diminished when he becomes a comic foil in the book's final scenes.

[14] In February 1909, Potter went to Hill Top, where, kept indoors by the inclement weather, she worked diligently on the illustrations for The Flopsy Bunnies.

[17] Since her first visit to Gwaeynynog fourteen years before the composition of The Flopsy Bunnies, Potter had sketched the garden many times.

She described it following a visit in 1895: "The garden is very large, two-thirds surrounded by a red brick wall with many apricots, and an inner circle of old grey apple trees on espaliers.

[19] In contrast to her limitations with the human form, MacDonald points out that Potter's mastery in the depiction of rabbits attains full flower in The Flopsy Bunnies.

But this incompleteness in dress permits her tail to be exposed and to precisely convey her apprehension as she approaches the house across the vast expanse of the lawn in search of her babies.

It is likely Potter (a farm owner at the date of the book's composition) had come to view rabbits as undifferentiated pests rather than individual personalities.

The reader's interest in the tale, she believes, lies in following the joke played upon McGregor rather than in the dull personalities of the rabbits.

[11] Peter no longer raids McGregor's garden for vegetables but grows his own and has his plot surrounded with a fence and chicken wire to keep predatory bunnies out.

Though "improvident" is not immediately defined, the cheerfulness of the family is made evident in the accompanying illustration of the bunnies romping in their burrow while their parents look upon their offspring with placid contentment.

Mr. McGregor and the rubbish heap are enduring constants in the rabbit universe of the tale, and because they are, the threat of starvation in the line "... there was not always enough to eat" is mitigated.

"Improvident" then is defined by course of action, and the lack of an immediate definition nonetheless carries the narrative forward and the reader's curiosity about its meaning is satisfied.

He counts the bunnies in what is presumably a Scottish accent: "six leetle fat rabbits", and argues with his wife about buying "baccy".

These and Mrs. McGregor's claim that he has tricked her and "done it a purpose" demonstrate Potter's attention to using dialect and dialogue as a means of defining character – in this instance, of contrasting their manner of speaking with her own in narrating the story.

MacDonald points out that the plot is simple and designed to capture the attention of young children, but suspects that Potter was more involved in the locale rather than the characters.

Potter had at one time declared the rabbit characters "wearisome", and the brevity with which she treats them in The Flopsy Bunnies suggests that this was her attitude to the book as a whole.

Kutzer believes that once Potter gained a life of her own and freed herself from domineering parents, she was reluctant to return to material that evoked unpleasant memories.

[29] Potter asserted her tales would one day be nursery classics, and part of the process in making them so was marketing strategy.

Their labour-intensive products were unprofitable however, and in 1972, The Eden Toy Company of New York became the exclusive manufacturer of Potter characters.

[36] The Tale of Peter Rabbit was the first of the small format books to be translated into a non-English language when Het Verhaal van Pieter Langoor was published in 1912 by Nijgh & Ditmar's Uitgevers Maatschappij, Rotterdam.

Peter Rabbit has since been published in braille (1921),[37] in the International Phonetic Alphabet (1968),[38][better source needed] and in the hieroglyphic script of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2005).