Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden

Gretchen Gerzina

Rutgers University Press, 2004 - Biography & Autobiography - 359 pages

Hugely successful in her own time for adult novels and plays, Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) would be astounded to find out she is remembered for a handful of books for children, but most of all for the enormously popular Secret Garden. This fascinating biography-the first to have the full cooperation of Burnett's descendants and relatives-examines her life with lively intelligence, sensitivity, and fascinating new, never-before-published material.

Burnett's life was full of those reversals of fortune that mark her work. Following modest beginnings in mid-Victorian Manchester, she arrived in post-Civil War Tennessee at the age of fifteen with her widowed mother and two sisters. Burnett was the breadwinner of the family from the age of seventeen, eventually publishing a total of fifty-two books and writing and producing thirteen plays. She made and spent a fortune in her lifetime, was generous and profligate, yet anxious about money and obsessively hardworking.

Constantly restless and inventive, Burnett's personal life was as complex as her professional one. Her first marriage to a southern doctor disintegrated as a result of her notorious flirtations and a scandalous affair, and her subsequent marriage to an English doctor turned actor suffered a similar fate. She understood the intensity and loneliness of the thoughtful child, but was herself a largely absent mother of two sons-overwhelmed by guilt when tragedy struck one of them; the other one never got over being the model for Little Lord Fauntleroy.

A woman of contrasts and paradoxes, this quintessentially British writer was equally at home in the United States, which honored her with a memorial in Central Park. Frances Hodgson Burnett reinvented for herself and for generations to come in both countries the magic and the mystery of the childhood she never had.

Contents

• The New World 1865: 3
• A Manchester Childhood 18491865: 12
• A Shabby Genteel Story 18661868: 25
• Vagabondia 18691872: 36
• The Reluctant Bride Abroad 18721876: 48
• Piracy and a Play 18761878: 62
• A City of Groves and Bowers 18771880: 77
• In the Company of Women 18801884: 87
• Fauntleroy 18841887: 103
• Return to Europe 18871888: 114
• Lionel 18891890: 127
• A Lady of Quality: 143
• Drury Lane 18911892: 145
• Great London Roars Below 18921894: 157
• The New Woman 18941896: 171
• Ladies of Quality 18961897: 189
• Maytham Hall 18971900: 202
• Stephen 19001902: 215
• Recovery and New Thoughts 19021906: 231
• The End of an Era 19071911: 251
• At Home and Abroad 19111918: 267
• Elizabeth 19191924: 290
• Epilogue: 304
• Acknowledgments: 341
• Index of Works: 355

Bibliographic information

• Title: Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden
• Author: Gretchen Gerzina
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2004
• ISBN: 0813533821, 9780813533827
• Length: 359 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures; Biography & Autobiography / Women; Juvenile Fiction / Short Stories; Literary Criticism / American / General; Travel / Special Interest / Literary