Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911).
Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was only four years old, the family fell on strained circumstances and emigrated to the United States 12 years later, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. Three years later, Hodgson 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. Burnett's elder son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. Burnett divorced her husband in 1898 and married Stephen Townsend two years later, but they divorced in 1902. A few years later, Burnett 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 Burnett's honour in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.
Childhood in Manchester, England
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. Her father owned a business in Deansgate, selling ironmongery and brass goods. The family lived comfortably, employing a maid and a nursemaid. 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, in particular 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 and moved with her children to live with relatives in Seedley Grove, Tanners Lane, Pendleton, Salford, where they lived in a house with a large, enclosed garden in which 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 a fertile imagination, writing stories of her own creation 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 tended to tease 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 once again to an even smaller home; at that time, Frances' limited education came to an end. Eliza's brother (Frances' 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 decided to accept his offer and move 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.
After the end of the Civil War and the trade it had brought to the area, Frances' uncle lost much of his business and was unable to provide for the newly arrived family. The family went to live in a log cabin during their first winter in New Market, outside Knoxville. They later moved to a home in Knoxville that Frances called "Noah's Ark, Mt. Ararat", a name inspired by the house's location atop an isolated hill. Living across from them was the Burnett family, and Frances became friendly with Swan Burnett, introducing him to books by authors such as Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott and William Makepeace Thackeray that she had read in England. She may have befriended him because of a childhood injury that left him lame and unable to participate in physical activities. Not long after they met, Swan left for college in Ohio.
Frances turned to writing to earn money. Her first story was published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1868. Soon after, Frances was being published regularly in Godey's Lady's Book, Scribner's Monthly, Peterson's Magazine and Harper's Bazaar. Keen to escape from the family's poverty, she tended to overwork herself, later writing that she had been "a pen driving machine" during the early years of her career. For five years, Frances wrote constantly, often not worrying about the quality of her work. Once her first story was published, before she was 18, Frances spent the rest of her life as a working writer. By 1869, she had earned enough to move the family into a better home in Knoxville. Her mother died the following year, and within two years, her two sisters and one of her brothers were married. Although she remained friends with Swan, neither was in a hurry to be married.
With the income from her writing, Frances returned to England for an extended visit in 1872, and then went to Paris where, having agreed to marry Swan, she ordered an haute couture wedding dress to be made and shipped to Tennessee. Shortly afterward, Frances returned home and attempted to postpone the wedding until the dress arrived, but Swan insisted they marry as soon as possible, and they were married in September 1873. Writing about the dress disappointment to a Manchester friend, she said of her new husband: "Men are so shallow ... he does not know the vital importance of the difference between white satin and tulle, and cream-coloured brocade". Frances gave birth to her first child, Lionel, in September 1874. That same year, she began work on her first full-length novel, That Lass o' Lowrie's, set in Lancashire.
The couple wanted to leave Knoxville, and her writing income allowed them to travel to Paris, where Swan continued his medical training as an eye and ear specialist. The birth of their second son, Vivian, forced them to return to the United States. She had wanted her second child to be a girl, and having chosen the name Vivien, and changed to the masculine spelling for her new son. The family continued to rely on her writing income, and to economize, Burnett made clothing for her sons, often including many frills. Later, Burnett continued to make clothing, designing velvet suits with lace collars for her boys and frilly dresses for herself. She allowed her sons' hair to grow long, which she then shaped into long curls.