Frances Hodgson Burnett

24 November 1849 - 29 October 1924

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections	Author name Sort ascending	Excerpt
Publishing	Ella Wheeler Wilcox	During her early years Ella Wheeler also wrote crude and uninspired prose tales for the lesser magazines and weeklies such as Peterson's Magazine. Wilcox, Ella Wheeler. The Worlds and I. Gay and Hancock, 1918. 77 She was elated when one of them appeared alongside something...
Textual Production	Noel Streatfeild	NS stuck with the realistic side of Ballet Shoes when she mined the same seam again in her second children's book, Tennis Shoes, 1937 (in which difficult, obstreperous Nicky Heath wins her success partly...
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...
Textual Features	G. B. Stern	A listing of books which GBS feels to be particularly her own includes Jane Austen , Edna St Vincent Millay , Dorothy Parker , and Rebecca West 's essays. But most of the women authors...
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, x, 416 pp. 67-9 and n
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...
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...
Textual Production	Charlotte Riddell	Furniss quoted with relish her allegedly low opinion of Ellen Wood , as simply a brute, she throws in bits of religion to slip her fodder down the public throat. qtd. in Ellis, Stewart Marsh. Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, and Others. Books for Libraries Press, 1931. 287 In fact CR had...
Textual Production	E. Nesbit	Here a new family of children (whose names all begin with C) join forces with several characters from EN 's earlier books. The walled garden of the title suggests Frances Hodgson Burnett 's The Secret...
Textual Production	Deborah Moggach	DM has written a number of TV screenplays, both from her own prose and that of others, and in the form of original scripts, from which several of her novels were expanded. She has adapted...
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, 2 Jan. 2003, 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...
Textual Production	Marghanita Laski	ML edited and introduced Victorian Tales for Girls, which includes tales by Mary Louisa Molesworth , Charlotte Yonge , Frances Hodgson Burnett , Juliana Ewing , Annie Fellows-Johnston , and one anonymous author. Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. Victorian Tales for Girls. Editor Laski, Marghanita, Pilot Press, 1947. prelims
Textual Production	Marghanita Laski	ML dedicated to Mary Lascelles (who had taught her at Somerville College ) her bio- critical work on three Victorian writers for children: Mrs. Ewing , Mrs. Molesworth , and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. Laski, Marghanita. Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. A. Barker, 1950. prelims Maxwell, Mrs. “Ladies of Quality”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2528, 14 July 1950, p. 438. 438
Textual Features	Sarah Josepha Hale	Editorial policy was to avoid anything controversial in mainstream politics. The magazine never mentioned the Civil War during the course of the conflict. In contrast to the Ladies' Magazine, the new one had a...
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

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.

Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

March 1911

The Idler monthly (launched as a sixpenny magazine in 1892) ceased publication.

Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.

316-17

Texts

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. A Lady of Quality. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1896.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, and Ethel Franklin Betts. A Little Princess. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1905.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. Dolly. Porter and Coates, 1877.

Browne, Frances, and Frances Hodgson Burnett. Granny’s Wonderful Chair. McClure, Phillips, 1904.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. Haworth’s. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1879.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1899.

Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. “Introduction”. Victorian Tales for Girls, edited by Marghanita Laski, Pilot Press, 1947, pp. 7-12.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, and Reginald B. Birch. Little Lord Fauntleroy. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1886.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. Robin. Frederick A. Stokes, 1922.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. Sara Crewe. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1888.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. That Lass o’ Lowrie’s. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1877.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Head of the House of Coombe. Frederick A. Stokes, 1922.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, and C. D. Williams. The Making of a Marchioness. Frederick A. Stokes, 1901.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, and Reginald B. Birch. The One I Knew Best of All. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1893.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, and Charles, 1870 - 1937 Robinson. The Secret Garden. Heinemann, 1911.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, and Graham Rust. The Secret Garden. Michael Joseph, 1986.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Shuttle. Frederick A. Stokes, 1907.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, and Frances Browne. “The Story of The Lost Fairy Book”. Granny’s Wonderful Chair, ACC Children’s Classics, 1999, pp. 5-8.

Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. Victorian Tales for Girls. Editor Laski, Marghanita, Pilot Press, 1947.