Annie Carter Moore

Annie B. Moore née Carter (born 1863?) was the last governess of children's author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. It was she who encouraged her former charge to begin what would become a highly successful literary career.

Born Annie B. Carter, she was nineteen when she was employed in 1882 to teach sixteen-year-old Beatrix Potter the German language. Three years later in June 1885, she left the Potter employ, and, in 1886, married civil engineer, Edwin Moore. The couple made their home in Bayswater and, on Christmas Eve 1887, the first of their eight children, Noel, was born. Soon after, the family moved to Baskerville Road near Wandsworth Common.

Moore and Potter maintained a friendly relationship through the years. Potter visited the Moores when her mother could spare the carriage, and found in the Moore home the sort of relaxed and casual attitude toward family relations that were completely foreign to the Potter household. Visits to the Moore home provided Potter with her first real experiences with children.

Potter once wrote, "I have liked my last governess the best on the whole — Miss Carter had her faults, and was one of the youngest people I have ever seen, but she was good tempered and intelligent."

Potter also wrote letters to the Moore children. These letters would feature the adventures of animals and include illustrations of the stories. It was Moore who first recognized the literary and commercial value of these stories and encouraged Potter to develop them into books. The children had kept the letters and Potter thus started her literary career with one that she had sent to Noel in 1893. It was expanded and published in 1902 as The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Other picture and story letters to the Moore children that were eventually developed into full-length books were The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher.

These books have since sold millions of copies.

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