Throughout her long and successful career, Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) had a reputation for delighting readers with stories about people whose desperate situations always seemed to improve by the last chapter. This charming piece of fiction, first published nearly a century ago — and more recently the basis of an acclaimed motion picture — follows that pattern.
Its young heroine, Sara Crewe, falls upon hard times at an English boarding school when her father suddenly dies. Left penniless and at the mercy of a vindictive headmistress, Sara manages — despite a multitude of adversities — to maintain her optimistic outlook and usual goodness, qualities that do not go unnoticed by a mysterious benefactor who eventually transforms her life.
Set in large, easy-to-read type and newly illustrated by artist Thea Kliros, A Little Princess will captivate romantics of all ages as it tells the riches-to-rags-to-riches tale of a winsome young miss.
Frances Hodgson Burnett was best known as an English playwright and author. Frances Eliza Hodgson was born on November 24, 1849, at Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England, to Eliza Boond and Edwin Hodgson. She was the middle child of five, with two older brothers and two younger sisters.
Frances grew up in a comfortable home. Mr. Hodgson sold brass goods to upper class households, and the family had a maid, a nurse-maid, and a horse and carriage. However, in the early 1850's when Frances was only three or four years old, her father died of a stroke, and the family was forced to sell their house and move. Her mother carried on the business, and Frances was often left in the care of her grandmother, who taught her to read. Her future as a writer might have begun here.
When she was about sixteen, the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. From then until she was nineteen, Frances supported them by selling her stories to magazines.
In September 1873, she married Swan Burnett. The couple moved to Paris for two years and had there two sons. In 1892, following the death her son Lionel from tuberculosis, Frances suffered severe depression. In 1898, she divorced Swan Burnett and remarried two years later; this second marriage only lasted a year.
Frances settled in Long Island, New York, where she lived for the rest of her life. She died in 1924 and rests in Roslyn Cemetery in Greenvale, New York, next to her other son, Vivian.
