'The Secret Garden' by F.Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson BURNETT(1849 – 1924)

Born in Cheetham, England. In 1865 emigrated with the family to the USA, where she began writing to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines from the age of 19. Later she began to write novels. She wrote: That Lass o' Lowrie's (1877), Through One Administration (1883), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin's (1888), Little Saint Elizabeth, and Other Stories (1893), A Lady of Quality (1896), A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Told for the First Time (1905), The Secret Garden (1911), My Robin (1912), etc.

'The Secret Garden' 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.