Frances Hodgson Burnett was born on 24th. November 1849 in Manchester in England. She was the eldest of a family of five, three girls and two boys. Her father was a well to do iron monger and  silversmith. But unfortunately, he died when she was just three years old and the family fell on hard times. They then had to move to Salford, a poor neighborhood. Here Frances saw and experienced how the poor lived and even wrote about her experiences in some of her books. Her family immigrated to America in 1865, when she was fifteen years old, but she did not forget her life in Manchester. Her novel ‘ Lass ‘o’ Lowries’ tells us about the life of the working class in Manchester.

Frances and her sisters attended a school in a neighboring house, which was known as ‘A select Seminary for young Ladies and Gentlemen’. Even at a young age she was fond of storytelling and was popular among her peers. In her younger days she would write her stories in her cook’s old notebooks. The family lived a poor life and was dependent on the two boys for their survival. At the age of sixteen, Frances opened a small school, which had only eight students. Her students could not pay her in money and paid her in kind by giving her food, vegetables and eggs. When she was eighteen she wrote her first short story for a women’s magazine and from then on there was no looking back for her. She got paid more and more money as she became a famous writer of short stories and novels.

She married Dr. Swan Burnett in 1874 and the couple had two sons. Lionel was born in 1847 and Vivian, born in 1876. It was her second son who inspired her to write the novel ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’. The author has admitted that though the novel was not a portrait of her son, ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ would have never been written if Vivian had not been born. The author into her book has incorporated much of what he said and how he behaved. The book was released in 1886 and enjoyed immediate success. Frances returned to England rich and famous but while there she encountered a great deal of misfortune. First was her divorce from her husband Dr. Burnett, followed by the failure of her second marriage to Stephen Townsend and then finally the sad news of the death of her elder son. 

After 1901, Frances lived in Bermuda and Long Island and devoted herself to writing, gardening and Christian Studies. It was while she was here that her novel ‘The Little Princess’ was finally published in book form in 1905. It was also here, in her Long Island home that she conceived and wrote ‘The Secret Garden’, which is thought to be her best and most famous work. She continued to write until her death in 1924, shortly after she turned seventy- five. Her novels have the element of escapism found in other books of her time like’ Alice in Wonderland’ etc. Some of her books continue to be popular even today and many have been enacted on stage and even been made into motion pictures.