Photo: Global Warming Images/REX Shutterstock.BBC News reports that Jo Hanks, a publisher at Penguin Random House Children's, noticed a reference to Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots in an out-of-print biography on Potter. Hanks' discovery led her to find the unpublished story's manuscript in the Victoria and Albert Museum Archives in London.
The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots, as found in the museum archives, is handwritten in a set of school notebooks, BBC News explains. Hanks told the news channel that when Potter sent the story to her publisher in 1914, she described it as the tale of "a well-behaved prime black Kitty cat, who leads rather a double life."
And while we're thrilled to meet the new feline character, there's one part of the news that might be even more exciting. Hanks told BBC News that the story will also feature an "older, slower, and portlier" Peter Rabbit himself.
The story will be published for the first time by Frederick Warne & Co, an imprint of Penguin Random House and the publisher of Potter's original stories. The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots will be published on September 1, and is illustrated by Quentin Blake, who has also illustrated a number of Roald Dahl books.
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