Synopsis
The Secret Garden by Frances Burnett is one of the best-loved stories of all time. Mary Lennox was horrid. Selfish and spoilt, she was sent to stay with her hunchback uncle in Yorkshire. She hated it. But when she finds the way into a secret garden and begins to tend to it, a change comes over her and her life. She meets and befriends a local boy, the talented Dickon, and comes across her sickly cousin Colin who had been kept hidden from her. Between them, the three children work astonishing magic in themselves and those around them.
About the Author
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (1849 –1924) was a prolific writer but her enduring fame rests mainly with three very popular works of fiction: Little Lord Fauntleroy (published in 1885–1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). These novels were originally regarded as being aimed at a juvenile readership but on publication they also garnered an appreciative adult following. There is a common theme running through each of these titles: a young person is isolated and presented with trials and tribulations which they tackle with great courage and ingenuity to reach their happy ending. Burnett enjoyed socializing and lived a lavish lifestyle. Beginning in the 1880s, she began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there. This was Maytham Hall in Kent where Burnett kept extensive gardens, including an impressive rose garden. She wrote The Secret Garden while at the Maytham and it is often cited as the inspiration for the setting of the novel. Her oldest son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898 and married Stephen Townsend, a man ten years her junior, in 1900. Burnett’s biographer Gretchen Gerzina said of the marriage, ‘it was the biggest mistake of her life.’ They were divorced two years later. Once again Burnett turned to writing to increase her income and in 1905 she reworked her play A Little Princess into anovel. In 1907, she returned permanently to the United States, having become a citizen in 1905, and she built a home on Long Island outside New York City. Her son Vivian was employed in the publishing business and at his request she agreed to be editor for Children’s Magazine. Over the next few years she wrote a number of short stories for this periodical. In 1911 The SecretGarden was published. In the years following Burnett continued to write novels, the last one being published in 1922. She died on Long Island in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery. In 1936 a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honour in Central Park’s Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
