Frances Hodgson Burnett, (November 24, 1849 - October 29, 1924) was an English playwright and author. She is best known for her children's stories, in particular The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Life and Work

Born Frances Eliza Hodgson in Manchester, England, she emigrated to Knoxville, Tennessee in the United States after the death of her father in 1854. The family lived in bad circumstances, since the promised support from a maternal uncle was nonexistent. In 1868 Hodgson had a story published in Godey's Lady's Book. Soon after she was being published regularly in Godey's, Scribner's Monthly , Peterson's Ladies' Magazine and Harper's Bazaar. Her main writing talent was combining realistic detail of working-class life with a romantic plot.

She married Dr. Swan M. Burnett of Washington, D.C. in 1873.

Her first novel was published in 1877; That Lass o' Lowrie's was a story of Lancashire life.

After moving with her husband to Washington, D.C., Burnett wrote the novels Haworth's (1879), Louisiana (1880), A Fair Barbarian (1881), and Through One Administration (1883), as well as a play, Esmeralda (1881), written with William Gillette.

In 1886 she published Little Lord Fauntleroy. It was originally intended as a children's book, but had a great appeal to mothers. It created a fashion of long curls (based on her son Vivian's) and velvet suits with lace collars (based on Oscar Wilde's attire). The book sold more than half a million copies. In 1888 she won a lawsuit in England over the dramatic rights to Little Lord Fauntleroy, establishing a precedent that was incorporated into British copyright law in 1911.

In 1898 she divorced Dr. Burnett. She later re-married, this time to Stephen Townsend (1900).

Her later works include Sara Crewe (1888) - later rewritten as A Little Princess (1905); The Lady of Quality (1896) - considered one of the best of her plays; and The Secret Garden (1909) - for which she is probably best known today.

In 1893 she published a memoir of her youth, The One I Knew Best of All . From the mid-1890s she lived mainly in England, but in 1909 she moved back to the United States.

After her first son Lionel's death, Burnett delved into spiritualism and apparently found this a great comfort in dealing with her grief. During World War I, Burnett put her beliefs about what happens after death into writing with the novella: The White People .

Frances Hodgson Burnett died in Plandome, New York and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery nearby, next to her son Vivian. A life-size effigy of Lionel stands at their feet.

Project Gutenberg contains a large number of her works but not, it is clear from other online bibliographies, all of them. Notable in particular is the absence of the novel Robin, a sequel to The Head of The House Of Coombe. This absence is particularly noticable because the final paragraph of The Head of The House Of Coombe tells us that the story continues in Robin. According to an online bibliography, Robin was published in 1922, as was The Head of The House Of Coombeand therfore it too, should be out of copyright and available for transformation into e-text.

External links

• Project Gutenberg e-texts of works by Frances Hodgson Burnett