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The
Secret
Garden
by
Frances
Hodgson Burnett

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FROM THE BOOK JACKET:

"She was inside the wonderful garden and she could come through the door under the ivy at any time and she felt as if she had found a world of her own."

After the death of her parents in India, sullen and self-absorbed Mary Lennox is sent to live on her uncle's estate on the Yorkshire moors. Exploring the grounds, Mary discovers a walled garden, locked up, abandoned, and in ruins; and in a distant room in the house she finds a cousin she never knew existed--Colin, an invalid, ignored by his father and expecting to die. Mary and Dickon, the housemaid's spirited brother, befriend Colin, and set about restoring the garden, which opens up a world of magic, reconciling the children to the world of life.

Originally published in 1911, "The Secret Garden," an extraordinary novel that has influenced writers such as Eliot and Lawrence, highlights the transforming powers of love, joy, and nature, and of mystical faith and positive thinking.

"One of the most original and brilliant children's books of the twentieth century."
--Alison Lurie, from the Introduction

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Manchester, England, in 1849. In 1865, after her father's death, her mother moved the family to rural Tennessee, where they struggled to earn a living. At seventeen, Burnett sold her first story to a magazine, and by the time she was twenty-two she had earned enough to return to England. From 1887 until her death, she maintained homes in both England and America. Both her marriages--to Dr. Swan Burnett, with whom she had two sons, from 1874 to 1898, and to actor Stephen Townsend from 1900 to 1902--ended in divorce. Burnett wrote a number of popular novels for adults, among them "That Lass o' Lowrie's" (1877), "Through One Administration" (1883), and "The Shuttle" (1907), as well as several plays and a memoir of her childhood, "The One I Knew Best of All" (1893). But she is mainly remembered for her children's novels: "Little Lord Fauntleroy" (1886), "A Little Princess" (1905; an expanded version of the 1888 novella "Sara Crewe" and the stage play "The Little Princess"), and "The Secret Garden" (1911). Burnett died in 1924 at her home in Long Island.

Alison Lurie is a novelist and critic. Her novels include "Foreign Affairs" (Pulitzer Prize, 1985), "The War Between the Tates," "The Truth About Lorin Jones," and "The Last Resort," as well as "Don't Tell the Grownups: The Subversive Power of Children's Literature" and "Boys and Girls Forever: Children's Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter" (Penguin). She teaches at Cornell University.

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