FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT in The Reading Room at Kitchen Sink Dramas

The Reading Room

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

(1849-124)

Although born in Manchester, Frances Hodgson Burnett emigrated to America with her family as a child and spent much of her life there. She turned to writing when her mother died, leaving her in charge of her two younger siblings, and was soon publishing regularly in women’s magazines and periodicals. Although she also wrote plays, adult novels and eventually a biography, her first major success was with her children’s novel Little Lord Fauntleroy (1885), which sold half a million copies in its day, an incredible amount for a female writer. So widespread was its success that the book apparently spawned an international fashion craze for dressing children in velvet suits and lace collars, much to the dismay of small boys everywhere. The Secret Garden (1909), perhaps her best-known book, was inspired by Burnett’s discovery of a forgotten walled garden at Great Maytham Hall in Kent, the stately home she lived in between 1897 and 1907. Abandoned since the eighteenth century and almost entirely overgrown, the garden was restored by Burnett and planted with hundreds of roses. She went on to write several books there sitting in the gazebo, dressed in her uniform of white dress and veiled hat.