Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Manchester in 1849, the eldest daughter of a family which emigrated to America in 1865 after the father's death. Interested in making up stories from her childhood, Frances turned to writing professionally when the family's fortunes continued to decline in post-Civil-War Tennessee. She first won popular and critical success with her novel That Lass O' Lowries (1876-7), and consolidated it with a series of popular novels and plays. Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) was the most successful in her own lifetime, but she is probably most admired today for her children's classics A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911). Two unhappy marriages marred Mrs Hodgson Burnett's private life but she became an American citizen in 1905 and settled in Long Island until her death in 1924.