Secret Garden, The The. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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      THE SECRET GARDEN

      By

      FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

      This edition published by Dreamscape Media LLC, 2017

      www.dreamscapeab.com * [email protected]

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       About Frances Hodgson Burnett:

      Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy(published in 1885–1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911).

      Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1852, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in Jefferson City, Tennessee. There Frances began writing to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines from the age of 19. In 1870, her mother died, and in 1872 Frances married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their two sons were born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess.

      Burnett enjoyed socializing and lived a lavish lifestyle. Beginning in the 1880s, she began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her oldest son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townsend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, Long Island, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.

      In 1936 a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honour in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.

      Source: Wikipedia

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

       I. THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

       II. MISTRESS MARY QUITE CONTRARY

       III. ACROSS THE MOOR

       IV. MARTHA

       V. THE CRY IN THE CORRIDOR

       VI. "THERE WAS SOMEONE CRYING—THERE WAS!"

       VII. THE KEY TO THE GARDEN

       VIII. THE ROBIN WHO SHOWED THE WAY

       IX. THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANYONE EVER LIVED IN

       X. DICKON

       XI. THE NEST OF THE MISSEL THRUSH

       XII. "MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?"

       XIII. "I AM COLIN"

       XIV. A YOUNG RAJAH

       XV. NEST BUILDING

       XVI. "I WON'T!" SAID MARY

       XVII. A TANTRUM

       XVIII. "THA' MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME"

       XIX. "IT HAS COME!"

       XX. "I SHALL LIVE FOREVER—AND EVER—AND EVER!"

       XXI. BEN WEATHERSTAFF

       XXII. WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN

       XXIII. MAGIC

       XXIV. "LET THEM LAUGH"

       XXV. THE CURTAIN

       XXVI. "IT'S MOTHER!"

       XXVII. IN THE GARDEN

      I.

      THERE IS NO ONE LEFT

      When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was