Timeline
Title
Country/Nationality
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 3 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 Knoxville, Tennessee in 1873 she married Swan Burnett, 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.
With the income from her writing, she 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 she 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-colored brocade". Within the year she gave birth to her first child, Lionel, in September 1874. Also during that year she began work on her first full-length novel, That Lass o' Lowrie's, set in Lancashire.
Burnett lived for the last 17 years of her life in Plandome Manor, where she died on 29 October 1924, aged 74.
Books by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Little Princess
The novel tells of the troubles of a wealthy young girl, Sara Crewe, who is sent to an oppressive London boarding school during her father’s campaign in India. Thanks to Capt. Crewe’s money, Sara is treated as a little princess until, one day, word c...
The Secret Garden
One of the most delightful and enduring classics of children's literature, The Secret Garden by Victorian author Frances Hodgson Burnett has remained a firm favorite with children the world over ever since it made its first appearance. Initially publ...
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Little Lord Fauntleroy is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was published as a serial in St. Nicholas Magazine from November 1885 to October 1886, then as a book by Scribner's (the publisher of St. Nicholas) in 1886. The illustrations by Reginal...
Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin’s Boarding School
The story told in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel, A Little Princess, was first written as a serialized novella, Sara Crewe, or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s, and published in St. Nicholas Magazine, in 1888. It tells the story of Sara Crewe...
The Dawn of a Tomorrow
A wealthy London business man takes a room in a poor part of the city. He is depressed and has decided to take his life by going the next day to purchase a hand gun he had seen in a pawnshop window. The morning comes with one of those 'memorable fogs...
In the Closed Room
This is a short story about a shy, quiet little girl living in a big city. When her parents are offered the opportunity to take care of a house in the suburbs for the summer she meets another little girl in the house and they become playmates.
The Shuttle
The Shuttle is a 1907 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. One of Burnett's longer and more complicated books for adults, it deals with themes of intermarriages between wealthy American heiresses and impoverished British nobles.
The Lost Prince
This book, a Ruritanian romance for children, is about Marco Loristan, his father, and his friend, a street urchin called "The Rat". Marco's father, Stefan, is a Samavian patriot working to overthrow the cruel dictatorship in the kingdom of Samavia....
Emily Fox-Seton
This novel is divided into 2 parts. The first, "The Making Of A Marchioness" tells about the odd courtship of Emily and lord Walderhurst. The second part, "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst", most of the book, tells what happens after… This adult fairy...
A Lady of Quality
Set in late 1600's England, the story follows the life of a woman living an unconventional life. The loves of her life and all of its ups and downs are included.
Haworth's
The story of an inventor's son, who tries to prevent him and a couple other characters from being taken into poverty by the man of the house who is drinking away the money, while trying to inherit their grandmother's money.
T. Tembarom
The story of a Boy living in New York as a street waif, who sells newspapers eventually finds himself to be the heir of an ancient manor. The kids at school never understood what the "T" was for in his name, and he didn't tell them. Does that have so...