Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett

Names: Frances Eliza Hodgson
Born: November 24, 1849
Died: October 29, 1924
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Hometown: Manchester, England
Residence: Knoxville, TN; Kent, England; Long Island, NY
Education: Little formal schooling
Career: Writer
Genres: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Childrens

Internet Sites:

Burnett, Frances Hodgson—University of Maryland Electronic Reading Room http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/ReadingRoom/Fiction/Burnett
Project Gutenberg provides access to the complete text of several of Burnett’s novel at this site.

Biography:

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born into a prosperous English family in 1849. Her father, Edwin Hodgson, was the owner of a successful furnishings company. He died when Burnett was only four, however, leaving Eliza Boond Hodgson, Burnett's mother, to run the business and raise their five children alone. Economic stresses caused by the American Civil War exacerbated the difficulties the family faced. Manchester, the city they lived in, was an important textile producer. The Northern blockade lowered the amount of raw cotton reaching Manchester's textile mills to a trickle, causing a local depression. Eliza Hodgson was forced to sell the family business during this economic crisis.
Seeking economic opportunities for her adolescent sons, Burnett's mother moved the family to New Market, Tennessee in 1865. Her brother owned a business there and had offered positions to his nephews. The move did not improve the family's financial situation, since the uncle's business failed soon after they arrived in America, but it had a positive effect on 16 year-old Burnett. She fell in love with the unspoiled, pastoral beauty of the state, so different from the grimy, industrial environment of Manchester. Despite her pleasure in her new surroundings, she was not oblivious to the financial problems facing her family. She attempted several money-making schemes, including starting a small school. None of the projects was ultimately successful. She decided to try to earn money by sending some of the stories she had written to Godey's Lady's Book. Although she had little formal education, Burnett loved to read and had a vivid imagination. She was also intimately familiar with the conventions of writing for ladies' magazines because she was a member of their audience. Her first stories were published in 1868, and by 1871 she was writing for magazines all over America.
Her first novel was released, as was the common custom of the time, as a magazine serial in 1873. By this time she was also financially secure enough to have achieved several other goals. Her family had moved from rural New Market to the nearby city of Knoxville. She also was able to return to England, spending 1872-early 1873 visiting relatives and friends she had left behind seven years before. She returned from Europe in 1873 to fulfill a promise--she had agreed to marry Swan Burnett, a neighbor in New Market. Burnett's fiance was the son of a doctor and had medical training as well.
After their marriage, the couple moved to New York temporarily. Burnett delivered a healthy son, Lionel, in 1874, and they moved to Paris the following year to allow Dr. Burnett to receive specialized medical training. Throughout the early years of their marriage, Burnett continued to write prolifically. Her writing, in fact, supplied much of the family income (a later source of strain in the marriage). In 1876 Burnett had another son, Vivian, and the family returned to the United States. They settled in Washington, D.C., where Dr. Burnett became a well-respected physician and Frances Burnett continued to write.
Burnett was primarily considered a realistic writer for adults at this time, although she had written some works for children as early as 1879. Her fame as a children's author followed the publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), a story suggested to her by imagining her own children transplanted to England and the resulting culture clash between democratic and aristocratic ideals. The novel was an immediate success, selling thousands of copies. More importantly for Burnett, royalties from its sale financed an informal separation from her husband. Burnett had been secretly unhappy with the relationship for some time, and she used her sudden wealth to embark on a lengthy tour of Europe with her sons, but not her husband.
During her trip abroad Burnett discovered that an English playwright had adapted her famous novel for the stage. Upset at the expropriation of her work, Burnett attacked on two fronts. She took legal action, suing the playwright, and also rushed to pen her own dramatization of the novel. Although her rendition appeared several months after the plagiarized version, she won both battles. Her play was popular and she won the landmark suit, forcing English authors and printers to honor American copyrights. During the 1890s she would successfully adapt many of her other books into plays, often with the help of Stephen Townesend, an actor and playwright.
During her travels abroad Burnett enjoyed the rewards of her fame and wealth, buying fine clothes and rich presents, staying in expensive hotels, and meeting well-known people. Her enjoyment was blighted, however, by the discovery in 1890 that her older son Lionel had consumption. Moved by a combination of love, fear, and guilt, Burnett spent months seeking a cure for her son. When it became clear that his condition was incurable, she devoted her energies to making him comfortable and concealing from him the terminal nature of his illness. She believed that her 15 year-old son would not be able to face imminent death. After he passed away, Burnett channeled much of her grief into her writing. Her stories for the next few years were filled with angelic, innocent children. She also completed a memoir of her own childhood, The One I Knew Best of All (1893).
In 1896, her grief somewhat purged, Burnett attempted to return to the adult milieu she had occupied before Little Lord Fauntleroy and her son's death. Her next novel, though a popular success, met with mostly critical reviews. Although she continued to write for adults, the adult novels that followed this disappointment were aimed at popular rather than literary tastes.
Another disappointment was the failure of her second marriage. She and Swan Burnett had divorced in 1898 and she remarried Stephen Townesend in 1900. The new marriage was unsuccessful almost from the start. By 1902 the two could no longer live together. They remained separated, though they never divorced, until Townesend died in 1914. During this turbulent period Burnett sought solace in the idealistic fantasies that had often sustained her before. She rented a manor in Kent for nine years, from 1898 to 1907, and immersed herself in a fantasy of rural English life. The manor had a lovely garden, which she enjoyed working in and often wrote in as well. When she left the manor she bought property on Long Island and had a house built there, also with a large garden. The image of the garden as a regenerative place in The Secret Garden (1911), her most critically acclaimed work, no doubt stems from these real antecedents.
Burnett divided her time between Europe and the United States until 1914, when the outbreak of World War I forced her to take up permanent residence in her Long Island home. Her extended American stay was not a hardship, however. She continued to write until her death in 1924, enjoying her garden and her family, especially her grandchildren. The best of her work for children continues to be enduringly popular with readers and critics.

References:

Bixler, Phyllis. " Frances Hodgson Burnett." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 42, Glenn E. Estes, ed. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1985.
Rutherford, L.M. "Frances Hodgson Burnett." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 141, Laura M. Zaidman, ed. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1994.

--Jennifer Duke-Sylvester

Primary Bibliography:

That Lass o' Lowrie's, Scribner, Armstrong, 1877
"Theo." A Love Story, Peterson, 1877; revised Scribners, 1879
Surly Tim and Other Stories, Scribner, Armstrong, 1877
Dolly: A Love Story, unauthorized edition Porter & Coates, 1877; authorized version published as Vagabondia: A Love Story, Osgood, 1884
Pretty Polly Pemberton. A Love Story, unauthorized edition Peterson, 1877; authorized edition Scribners, 1878
Kathleen. A Love Story, unauthorized edition Peterson, 1878; authorized edition published as Kathleen Mavourneen,Scribners, 1878
Our Neighbor Opposite, Routledge, 1878
Miss Crespigny. A Love Story, unauthorized edition Peterson, 1878; authorized edition Scribners, 1879
A Quiet Life; and The Tide on the Moaning Bar, Peterson, 1878; republished as The Tide on the Moaning Bar, Routledge, 1879
Lindsay's Luck, authorized edition Scribners, 1878; unauthorized edition Peterson, 1879
Jarl's Daughter and Other Stories, Peterson, 1879; republished as Jarl's Daughter and Other Novelettes, Peterson, 1883
Natalie and Other Stories, Warne, 1879
Haworth's, Scribners, 1879
Louisiana, Scribners, 1880; republished with That Lass o' Lowrie's, Macmillan, 1880
A Fair Barbarian, Warne, 1881
Esmeralda, A Comedy-Drama Founded on Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett's Story of the Same Name, with William Gillette, 1881
Through One Administration, Warne, 1883
Little Lord Fauntleroy, Scribners, 1886
A Woman's Will or Miss Defarge, Warne, 1886
Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin's, Scribners, 1888
Sara Crewe; or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's: and Editha's Burglar Warne, 1888; published separately, Editha's Burglar: A Story for Children, Jordan, Marsh, 1888
The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax, Warne, 1888
The Pretty Sister of Jose, Scribners, 1889
Children I Have Known and Giovanni and the Other, Osgood, McIlvaine, 1892; republished as Giovanni and the Other Children Who Have Made Stories, Scribners, 1892
The Drury Lane Boys' Club, Moon, 1892
The One I Knew Best of All: A Memory in the Mind of a Child, Scribners, 1893
Piccino and Other Child Stories, Scribners, 1894; republished as The Captain's Youngest Piccino and Other Child Stories, Warne, 1894
Two Little Pilgrim' Progress: A Story of the City Beautiful, Scribners, 1895
A Lady of Quality, Scribners, 1896
His Grace of Osmonde, Scribners, 1897
In Connection with The De Willoughby Claim, Scribners, 1899
The Making of a Marchioness, Stokes, 1901; republished as The Methods of Lady Walderhurst as Emily Fox-Seton, Stokes, 1909
In the Closed Room, McClure, Phillips, 1904
A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Told for the First Time, Scribners, 1905
The Dawn of a To-morrow, Scribners, 1906
Queen Silver-Bell, Century, 1906; republished as The Troubles of Queen Silver-Bell, Warne, 1907
Racketty-Packetty House, Century, 1906
The Cozy Lion, as Told by Queen Crosspatch, Century, 1907
The Shuttle, Stokes, 1907
The Good Wolf, Moffat, Yard, 1908
The Spring Cleaning, as Told by Queen Crosspatch, Century, 1908
The Land of the Blue Flower, Moffat, Yard, 1909
Barty Crusoe and His Man Saturday, Moffat, Yard, 1909
The Secret Garden, Stokes, 1911
My Robin, Stokes, 1912
T. Tembarom, Century, 1913
The Lost Prince, Century, 1915
The Little Hunchback Zia, Stokes, 1916
The Way to the House of Santa Claus: A Christmas Story for Very Small Boys in Which Every Little Reader Is the Hero of a Big Adventure, Harper, 1916
The White People, Harper, 1917
The Head of the House of Coombe, Stokes, 1922
Robin, Stokes, 1922
In the Garden, Medici Society of America, 1925

Plays:

That Lass o' Lowrie's, with Julian Magnus, New York, 28 November 1878
Esmeralda, with William Gillette, New York, 26 October 1881; produced again as Young Folk's Ways, London, 29 October 1883
The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy, London, 14 May 1888; New York, 11 December 1888
Phyllis, adapted from The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax, London, 1 July 1889
Nixie, adapted from Editha's Burglar, with Stephen Townesend, London, 7 April 1890
The Showman's Daughter, with Townesend, London, 6 January 1892
The First Gentleman of Europe, with Constance Fletcher, New York, 25 January 1897
A Lady of Quality, with Townesend New York, 1 November 1897; London, 8 March 1899
A Little Unfairy Princess, London, 20 December 1902; produced again as A Little Princess, New York, 14 January 1903
The Pretty Sister of Jose, New York, 10 November 1903; London, 16 November 1903
That Man and I, adapted from In Connection with The De Willoughby Claim, London, 25 January 1904
Dawn of a Tomorrow, New York, 28 January 1909; London, 13 May 1910
Racketty-Packetty House, New York, 23 December 1912

Secondary Bibliography:

Bixler, Phyllis. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Twayne's English Authors Series, Twayne, 1984.
��. The Secret Garden : Nature's Magic, Twayne's Masterwork Studies ,Twayne, 1996.
Burnett, Vivian. The Romantick Lady (Frances Hodgson Burnett) the Life Story of an Imagination, C. Scribner's Sons, 1927, 1930.
Carpenter, Angelica Shirley, and Jean Shirley. Frances Hodgson Burnett : Beyond the Secret Garden, Lerner Publications, 1990.
Greene, Carol. Frances Hodgson Burnett : Author of the Secret Garden, Childrens Press, 1995.
Laski, Marghanita. Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, Oxford University Press, 1951.
Thwaite, Ann. Waiting for the Party: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1849-1924, Scribner, 1974, 1991.