Nursery rhyme rhymes became associated with the idea of political correctness. Most attempts to reform nursery rhymes on this basis appear to be either very small scale, light-hearted updating, like Felix Dennis's "When Jack Sued Jill – Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times" (2006), or satires written as if from the point of view of political correctness in order to condemn reform. The controversy in Britain in 1986 over changing the language of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" because, it was alleged in the popular press, it was seen as racially dubious, was apparently based only on a rewriting of the rhyme in one
Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes as evidenced in the privately printed edition of "The Tailor of Gloucester". Her interest in rhymes was partly an attraction to the rhythms of older forms of English, and partly to the mysteries and riddles many rhymes presented. Potter took inspiration from childhood favourite Randolph Caldecott, especially his rhymes that gave prominent place to animals, and, in her 1902 correspondence with her editor Norman Warne about the publication of "Peter Rabbit", indicated she "sometimes thought of trying some of the other rhymes about animals, which [Caldecott] did not do." Following the publication of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" in 1902,