{\b Frances Hodgson Burnett}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 24 November 1849

{\b Date of Death}.: 29 October 1924

{\b Works}.

American novelist and children's writer. Her first novel, That Lass O'Lowrie's 
(1877), launched her career, but it was Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) that 
made her famous. It was successfully adapted for the stage and later for 
television. A Little Princess (1905) soon appeared, to be followed later by 
her best work, The Secret Garden, which has become a classic in children's 
literature.

{\b Featured Works}.

The Secret Garden, Sara Crewe.

{\b General Comment}.

She was born in Manchester, but moved with her family to Tennessee in America 
in 1865 and became an American citizen in 1905. She carried a lot of childhood 
memories which brought about her early autobiography, The One I Knew Best of 
All: A Memory of the Mind of a Child (1893). As a child she had been very 
attached to the dialect around Manchester and used it in her first novels, 
That Lass O'Lowrie's (1877) and Haworth's (1879). In 1873 she got married to 
Dr Swan Moses Burnett and divorced him in 1898. In writing some of her plays, 
she collaborated with a young Englishman, Stephen Townsend, to whom she got 
married in 1900. They became separated in 1901, after which she travelled 
extensively between America and England. She contributed to a change in the 
Copyright Act (1911) when she effectively prevented an unauthorised 
dramatisation of Little Lord Fauntleroy in England. Most of her books are no 
longer known but, during her lifetime, she enjoyed considerable fame and 
enough wealth to enable her to live in great style. She finally settled in 
Long Island where she later died aged seventy-four.