The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies sequels are the best known and most successful of Potter's books. The author had an affinity for rabbits; she lived with them as pets and observed them closely for years. Though she once wrote that rabbits were creatures of "warm volatile temperaments" and were "shallow and extremely transparent", she invested her rabbits with a variety of characterizations consistent with the nature of the animal. All the rabbit tales were inspired in part by Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories, which Potter began illustrating as early as 1893 in an attempt to find career direction and probably because they featured a
The Tale of Mr. Tod in the stories of Uncle Remus. There, both rabbits and foxes contend, but unlike the fox in Uncle Remus, the Potter fox is not particularly wily and the rabbits win, not by outsmarting the fox, but only because they enjoy a stroke of luck. The badger is not a typical animal in Uncle Remus, but in Potter he is the clever one. The finale reunites the rabbits, but the wily animals win nothing. "Mr. Tod" and the Uncle Remus stories are only similar in depicting the powerless triumphing over the powerful. "Mr. Tod" was adapted to animation and telecast as