Childhood in Manchester, England Frances Eliza Hodgson was born at 141 York Street in
Cheetham, Manchester on 24 November 1849. She was the third of five children of Edwin Hodgson, an
ironmonger from
Doncaster in
Yorkshire, and his wife Eliza Boond, from a well-to-do Manchester family. Her father owned a business in
Deansgate, selling ironmongery and brass goods. The family lived comfortably, employing a maid and a nursemaid. Frances had two older brothers and two younger sisters. Barely a year later, on 1 September 1853 and with his wife pregnant for a fifth time, Hodgson died suddenly of a
stroke, leaving the family without an income. Frances was cared for by her grandmother while her mother took over running the family business. From her grandmother, who bought her books, Frances learned to love reading, in particular her first book,
The Flower Book, which had colored illustrations and poems. Because of their reduced income, Eliza had to give up their family home and moved with her children to live with relatives in
Seedley Grove,
Tanners Lane,
Pendleton,
Salford, where they lived in a house with a large, enclosed garden in which Frances enjoyed playing. For a year, Frances went to a small
dame school run by two women, where she first saw a book about fairies. When her mother moved the family to Islington Square, Salford, Frances mourned the lack of flowers and gardens. Their new home was located in a gated square of faded gentility adjacent to an area with severe overcrowding and poverty that "defied description", according to
Friedrich Engels, who lived in Manchester at the time. Frances had a fertile imagination, writing stories of her own creation in old notebooks. One of her favorite books was
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin'', and she spent many hours acting out scenes from the story. Frances and her siblings were sent to be educated at The Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, where she was described as "precocious" and "romantic". She had an active social life and enjoyed telling stories to her friends and cousins; in her mother, she found a good audience, although her brothers tended to tease her about her stories. Manchester was almost entirely dependent on a
cotton economy that was ruined by the
Lancashire cotton famine brought about by the
American Civil War. In 1863, Eliza Hodgson was forced to sell their business and move the family once again to an even smaller home; at that time, Frances' limited education came to an end. Eliza's brother (Frances' uncle), William Boond, asked the family to join him in
Knoxville, Tennessee, where he now had a thriving dry goods store. Within the year, Eliza decided to accept his offer and move the family from Manchester. She sold their possessions and told Frances to burn her early writings in the fire.
Move to Tennessee After the end of the Civil War and the trade it had brought to the area, Frances' uncle lost much of his business and was unable to provide for the newly arrived family. The family went to live in a
log cabin during their first winter in
New Market, outside Knoxville. They later moved to a home in Knoxville that Frances called "Noah's Ark,
Mt. Ararat", a name inspired by the house's location atop an isolated hill. Living across from them was the Burnett family, and Frances became friendly with Swan Burnett, introducing him to books by authors such as
Charles Dickens,
Sir Walter Scott and
William Makepeace Thackeray that she had read in England. She may have befriended him because of a childhood injury that left him lame and unable to participate in physical activities. Not long after they met, Swan left for college in Ohio. Frances turned to writing to earn money. Her first story was published in ''
Godey's Lady's Book in 1868. Soon after, Frances was being published regularly in Godey's Lady's Book
, Scribner's Monthly, Peterson's Magazine and Harper's Bazaar''. Once her first story was published, before she was 18, Frances spent the rest of her life as a working writer. By 1869, she had earned enough to move the family into a better home in Knoxville. Her mother died the following year, and within two years, her two sisters and one of her brothers were married. Although she remained friends with Swan, neither was in a hurry to be married.
Marriage With the income from her writing, Frances returned to England for an extended visit in 1872, Frances gave birth to her first child, Lionel, in September 1874. That same year, she began work on her first full-length novel, ''
That Lass o' Lowrie's'', set in Lancashire. The couple wanted to leave Knoxville, and her writing income allowed them to travel to Paris, where Swan continued his medical training as an eye and ear specialist. The birth of their second son, Vivian, forced them to return to the United States. Later, Burnett continued to make clothing, designing velvet suits with lace collars for her boys and frilly dresses for herself. She allowed her sons' hair to grow long, which she then shaped into long curls. ''That Lass o' Lowrie's
was published to good reviews, and the rights were sold for a British edition. Shortly after the publication of the book, Burnett joined her husband in D.C., where she established a household and friends. She continued writing, becoming known as a rising young novelist. Despite the difficulties of raising a family and settling into a new city, Burnett began work on Haworth's
, which was published in 1879, as well as writing a dramatic interpretation of That Lass o' Lowrie's'' in response to a pirated stage version presented in London. After a visit to Boston in 1879, where she met
Louisa May Alcott, and
Mary Mapes Dodge, editor of children's magazine
St. Nicholas, Burnett began to write children's fiction. For the next five years, she had published several short works in
St. Nicholas. Burnett continued to write adult fiction as well:
Louisiana was published in 1880;
A Fair Barbarian in 1881; and
Through One Administration in 1883. However, as had happened earlier in Knoxville, Burnett felt the pressure of maintaining a household, caring for children and a husband, and keeping to her writing schedule, which caused exhaustion and depression. Swan's practice grew and had a good reputation, but his income lagged behind hers, so Burnett believed she had to continue writing. With her sons, Burnett moved on to spend the winter in Florence, where she wrote
The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax, the only book to be published in United Kingdom but not in the United States. Burnett would go on to make
Sara Crewe into a stage play and later rewrote the story into
A Little Princess. In December 1890, Burnett's elder son, Lionel, died from
consumption in Paris, which greatly affected her life and her writing. Following his death, before Burnett sank into a deep depression, she wrote in a letter to a friend that her writing was insignificant in comparison to having been the mother of two boys, one of whom died. At this time, Burnett turned away from her traditional faith in the
Church of England and embraced a mix of Spiritualism, New Thought, Christian Science, and others without actually joining any particular church. Burnett returned to London, where she sought the distraction of charity work and formed the
Drury Lane Boys' Club, hosting an opening in February 1892. Also during this period, Burnett wrote a play with a starring role for Stephen Townsend in an attempt to establish his acting career. After a two-year absence from her Washington, D.C. home, Burnett, her husband, and their younger son returned there in March 1892, where she continued charity work and began writing again. In 1893, Burnett published an autobiography, devoted to her elder son, titled
The One I Knew Best of All.
Divorce and move to Great Maytham Hall Burnett returned to London in 1894, where she heard the news that her younger son Vivian was ill, so she quickly went back to the United States. Vivian recovered from his illness, but missed his first term at
Harvard University. Burnett stayed with Vivian until he was well and then returned to London. At this time, she began to worry about her finances: Burnett was paying for Vivian's education; keeping a house in Washington D.C. (Swan had moved out of the house to his own apartment); and keeping a home in London. As she had in the past, Burnett turned to writing as a source of income and began to write
A Lady of Quality.
A Lady of Quality, published in 1896, was to become the first of a series of successful adult
historical novels, which was followed in 1899 with
In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim; and in 1901, she had published
The Making of a Marchioness and
The Methods of Lady Walderhurst. From the mid-1890s, Burnett lived in United Kingdom at
Great Maytham Hall—which had a large garden where she indulged her love for flowers—where she made her home for the next decade, although Burnett continued annual transatlantic trips to the United States. In February 1900, she married Townsend.
Remarriage and later life The marriage took place in
Genoa, Italy, and the couple went to
Pegli for their honeymoon, where they endured two weeks of steady rain. Burnett's biographer
Gretchen Gerzina writes of the marriage, "it was the biggest mistake of her life". Unable to bear the thought of continuing to live with Townsend at Maytham, Burnett rented a house in London for the winter of 1900–1901. There, she socialised with friends and wrote. Burnett worked on two books simultaneously:
The Shuttle, a longer and more complicated book; and
The Making of a Marchioness, which she wrote in a few weeks and published to good reviews. In the spring of 1901, when she returned to the country, Townsend tried to replace her long-time publisher Scribner's with a publishing house offering a larger advance. In the autumn of 1902, after a summer of socialising and filling Maytham with houseguests, she suffered a physical collapse. Burnett returned to United States, and in the winter of 1902 entered a
sanatorium. There, she told Townsend she would no longer live with him, and the marriage ended. Burnett returned to Maytham in June 1904. Maytham Hall had a series of walled gardens, and she wrote several books in the rose garden; it was there Burnett had the idea for
The Secret Garden, mainly written at the manor house in
Buile Hill Park while visiting Manchester. In 1905,
A Little Princess was published, after she had reworked the play into a novel. In 1907, she returned permanently to the United States, having become a citizen in 1905, and built a home, completed in 1908, in the Plandome Park section of
Plandome Manor on Long Island outside New York City. Her son Vivian was employed in the publishing business, and at his request, Burnett agreed to be an editor for ''Children's Magazine
. Over the next several years, she had published in Children's Magazine
several shorter works. In 1911, Burnett had The Secret Garden'' published. where she died on 29 October 1924, at age 74. == Reception ==