Little, Brown then published some of Burgess' stories as the book Old Mother West Wind. Then a representative of publisher Little, Brown and Company came by asking the magazine editor about children's stories, and the editor pointed him to Burgess. Later still, the magazine where Burgess worked published a few of those stories. Later when the boy stayed with grandparents for a month while widower Burgess (his wife had died in childbirth) worked, he wrote stories down and mailed them to be read to the boy. When Thornton Burgess began making up bedtime stories with named animals for his 4-year-old son, the boy was already familiar with Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit character, and would not allow his father to give his stories' rabbit character any other name. Burgess continued to write about Peter Rabbit until his retirement in 1960, in over 15,000 daily syndicated newspaper stories, many of them featuring Peter Rabbit, and some of them later published as books, but 'Peter Cottontail' is never mentioned again. He began putting on airs to live up to his important-sounding name, but after much teasing from his friends, soon returned to his original name, because, as he put it, 'There's nothing like the old name after all.' In the 26-chapter book, he takes on the new name partway through chapter 2, and returns to his 'real' name, Peter Rabbit, at the end of chapter 3. Four years later, in The Adventures of Peter Cottontail, Peter Rabbit, unhappy at his plain-sounding name, briefly changed his name to Peter Cottontail because he felt it made him sound more important. Peter Cottontail is a name temporarily assumed by a fictional rabbit named Peter Rabbit in the works of Thornton Burgess, an author from Sandwich, Massachusetts In 1910, when Burgess began his Old Mother West Wind series, the cast of animals included Peter Rabbit. For the popular Easter song, see Peter Cottontail (song).

The story of peter rabbit