But I loved owning this edition with its gorgeous images and, when I gave it to my younger cousins in Singapore, believing myself ready to part with my childhood attachment to a book I wouldn't ever forget, I did mourn its loss, though I was a teenager by then and studying the dead white male canon. My mother thought it completely foolish of me to buy a hardcover book and then finish it in one night (these were the days before Harry Potter and, besides, we had enough books in our house, in her opinion). Primarily remembered today for her trio of classic children's novels - Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911) - Burnett was also a popular adult novelist, in her own day, publishing romantic stories such as The Making of a Marchioness (1901) for older readers. She died in her Long Island, New York home, in 1924.

Following her great success as a novelist, playwright, and children's author, Burnett maintained homes in both England and America, traveling back and forth quite frequently. In 1900 Burnett married actor Stephen Townsend until 1902 when they got divorced. Swan Burnett, with whom she had two sons, Lionel and Vivian. Here Hodgson began to write, in order to supplement the family income, assuming full responsibility for the family upon the death of her mother, in 1870. She was educated at The Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentleman until the age of fifteen, at which point the family ironmongery, then being run by her mother, failed, and the family emigrated to Knoxville, Tennessee. Frances Eliza Hodgson was the daughter of ironmonger Edwin Hodgson, who died three years after her birth, and his wife Eliza Boond.

The secret garden and a little princess