Hardwicke Rawnsley Hardwicke Rawnsley Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley (29 September 1851 – 28 May 1920) was a Church of England clergyman, poet, hymn writer, local politician, and conservationist. He was also one of the founders of the National Trust. Living in the English Lake District for more than thirty years, he worked for the protection of the countryside and secured the support of people of influence for his campaigns. Rawnsley was born at the rectory, Shiplake, Oxfordshire, England, the fourth of ten children of the Rev Robert Drummond Burrell Rawnsley (1817–1882) and his wife, Catherine Ann, "née" Franklin (1818–1892). An older brother,
The Tale of Peter Rabbit explains, a Potter family friend and sometime poet, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, set Potter's tale into "rather dreadful didactic verse and submitted it, along with Potter's illustrations and half her revised manuscript, to Frederick Warne & Co.," who had been among the original rejecters. Warne editors declined Rawnsley's version "but asked to see the complete Potter manuscript" – their interest stimulated by the opportunity "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" offered the publisher to compete with the success of Helen Bannerman's wildly popular "Little Black Sambo" and other small-format children's books then on the market. When Warne inquired about the lack of