Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (published in 1885–1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 4 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and, in 1865, emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. 

Frances began her remunerative writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In 1873, she married Swan Burnett in Knoxville, Tennessee, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's) was published to good reviews. 

Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. Beginning in the 1880s, Burnett began to travel to England frequently and, in the 1890s, bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. 

Her elder 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, married Stephen Townsend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later, she settled in Nassau County, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.

In 1936, a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honor in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon. Frances Eliza Hodgson was born at 141 York Street in Cheetham, Manchester, on 24 November 1849. She was the third of five children of Edwin Hodgson, an ironmonger from Doncaster in Yorkshire, and his wife, Eliza Boond, from a well-to-do Manchester family. 

Hodgson owned a business in Deansgate, selling ironmongery and brass goods. The family lived comfortably, employing a maid and a nurse-maid. Frances had two older brothers and two younger sisters. In 1852, the family moved about a mile away to a newly built terrace, opposite St Luke's Church, with greater access to outdoor space. Barely a year later, on 1 September 1853 and with his wife pregnant for a fifth time, Hodgson died suddenly of a stroke, leaving the family without an income. 

Frances was cared for by her grandmother while her mother took over running the family business. From her grandmother, who bought her books, Frances learned to love reading, particularly her first book, The Flower Book, which had colored illustrations and poems. Because of their reduced income, Eliza had to give up their family home. She moved with her children to live with relatives in Seedley Grove, Tanners Lane, Pendleton, and Salford, where they lived in a house with a large enclosed garden where Frances enjoyed playing.

For a year, Frances went to a small dame school run by two women, where she first saw a book about fairies. When her mother moved the family to Islington Square, Salford, Frances mourned the lack of flowers and gardens. Their new home was located in a gated square of faded gentility adjacent to an area with severe overcrowding and poverty that "defied description," according to Friedrich Engels, who lived in Manchester at the time.

Frances had an active imagination, writing stories she made up in old notebooks. One of her favorite books was Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she spent many hours acting out scenes from the story. Frances and her siblings were sent to be educated at The Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, where she was described as "precocious" and "romantic." She had an active social life and enjoyed telling stories to her friends and cousins; in her mother, she found a good audience, although her brothers teased her about her stories.

Manchester was almost entirely dependent on a cotton economy that was ruined by the Lancashire cotton famine brought about by the American Civil War. In 1863, Eliza Hodgson was forced to sell their business and move the family again to an even smaller home; at that time, Frances' limited education ended. Eliza's brother (Frances's uncle), William Boond, asked the family to join him in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he now had a thriving dry goods store. 

Within the year, Eliza accepted his offer and moved the family from Manchester. She sold their possessions and told Frances to burn her early writings in the fire. In 1865, the family emigrated to the United States and settled near Knoxville.