Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Standard Name: Burnett, Frances Hodgson
Birth Name: Frances Eliza Hodgson
Indexed Name: F. Hodgson
Pseudonym: The Second
Pseudonym: Fannie E. Hodgson
Married Name: Frances Eliza Burnett
Indexed Name: Mrs Fanny Hodgson Burnett
Nickname: Dearest
Nickname: Fluffy
Used Form: F. H. Burnett
Writing during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, equally at home with both Britain and the USA, with their respective book trades and publishing practices, FHB began with magazine serials, then industrial novels, romance novels, and historical novels. She is best-remembered for her children's books, between which and her adult fiction the line is blurred rather than distinct. Both a highly professional and a popular writer, she is a remarkably astute commentator on the national characteristics of England and the United States. Her character-drawing (snobs, faithful servants, unspoilt children) is just stereotypical enough for instant appeal, while retaining a surprising capacity for original insight.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Frances Hodgson Burnett, turning to the viewer's right. Her hair is short and she is wearing a pale dress with short sleeves and a double string of pearls around her neck.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Anne Ridler
Her education began with her mother and a governess. At six she began attending a class run by the sister of another Rugby master. Later came visits to a piano teacher, and at home a...
Education Agatha Christie
By the time Agatha was born, Clara Miller believed that girls ought not to learn to read before the age of eight. Defiantly, Agatha taught herself to read at five. She eagerly devoured Lewis Carroll
Education Kate Clanchy
As a child KC loved Victorian stories for girls—Frances Hodgson Burnett 's A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (or Susan Coolidge)'s What Katy Did, and Louisa May Alcott
Education Hilary Mantel
HM later wrote of her earliest memory. Her early world, she said, was synaesthesic.
Mantel, Hilary. “Giving up the Ghost: A Memoir”. London Review of Books, pp. 8 - 13.
8
Mantel, Hilary. Giving up the Ghost. Fourth Estate, 2003.
23
As a child she was constantly reading and always enacting some fictional role. Anyone who hesitates near me...
Friends, Associates Ménie Muriel Dowie
As a public literary figure MMD moved amongst the major writers of her day. At the Women Writers' Dinner of the New Vagabonds Club in June 1895, she spoke alongside Adeline Sergeant , Christabel Coleridge
Friends, Associates Sara Jeannette Duncan
In Washington, amid many social pleasures, SJD met Frances Hodgson Burnett and the columnist Abigail Dodge . She also developed a friendship with William Dean Howells and his family which continued sporadically for many years...
Friends, Associates Sara Jeannette Duncan
One of the friendships she enjoyed in India was with Mary Curzon (the American wife of the Viceroy); they were both friends of Frances Hodgson Burnett . Lady Curzon, who had been a model for...
Friends, Associates Louisa May Alcott
LMA was a friend of, among others, Frances Hodgson Burnett , Ralph Waldo Emerson , who helped her family manage their financial difficulties, and Henry David Thoreau , who taught science to her and her...
Friends, Associates Laurence Alma-Tadema
As the work at Wittersham progressed LAT struck up a friendship with Frances Hodgson Burnett , who rented the splendid Maytham Hall at Rolvenden nearby, and who became something of a mother-figure to her. She...
Intertextuality and Influence Noel Streatfeild
Here an English family, the Winters, go on holiday to California, and Jane Winter is picked to play the role of Mary Lennox in a film of Frances Hodgson Burnett 's The Secret Garden...
Intertextuality and Influence Maria Edgeworth
Literary memoirs and old second-hand illustrated editions testify to ME 's enormously wide juvenile audience during the Victorian period. She influenced the work of later children's writers as various as Louisa May Alcott , Frances Hodgson Burnett
Literary responses Evelyn Sharp
Beverly Lyon Clark , who wrote an introduction to this book and thought extremely highly of it, argued that the neglect of it stemmed from its belonging not just to one but to several under-appreciated...
Literary responses Ella Hepworth Dixon
Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote admiringly to EHD about the first story in this book.
Fehlbaum, Valerie. Ella Hepworth Dixon: the Story of a Modern Woman. Ashgate, 2005.
104-5
In a recent article, Emma Liggins found this collection shows great sympathy for the plight of single women, while being...
Occupation Constance Smedley
This building (just vacated by the Imperial Service Club was later exchanged for an even more spacious one at 138 Piccadilly. The London press in general warmly backed the new venture.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Crusaders. Chatto & Windus, 1912.
67-9 and n
Publishing Frances Browne
The popularity of this work combined with the obscurity of Browne's identity caused many readers to assume that the tales were of ancient, perhaps unknown origin. After Frances Hodgson Burnett (ignorant of FB 's name)...

Timeline

1910
British-born American Frances Hodgson Burnett published a novel which she originally intended for adults, but which became a children's classic: The Secret Garden.
March 1911
The Idlermonthly (launched as a sixpenny magazine in 1892) ceased publication.