The Essential Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and The Lost Prince with an Introduction by Nicholas Tamblyn

Presenting The Essential Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and The Lost Prince with an introduction by Nicholas Tamblyn, and illustrations by Katherine Eglund. This collection is part of The Essential Series by Golding Books.

Rare among children's fiction, Frances Hodgson Burnett's fantasy novels have touched the imagination of readers for generations like few others. Her children's classics The Secret Garden and A Little Princess in particular, with their strong female characters and unique coming of age stories, have greatly appealed to children (and girls), yet the truth is they were written for, and will appeal to, readers of any age that enjoy naturalist and classic literary fiction.

Her novels contain a deeply humanist message, and in promoting a regard for nature and simply for life itself, while being feel-good stories they are also written with an impassioned sense of what is true and with a rare realism. The books could be called children's literature or young adult novels or feminist fiction, but this is finally as incorrect and limiting as calling the books of Mark Twain or Robert Louis Stevenson suited to boys or to men, when they have a great appeal and meaning for readers that goes beyond these false labels.

A few words from Nicholas Tamblyn's introduction: "There is a sense of wonder and gratitude that permeates the work of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Some may label this childlike wonder, given that her novels have appealed so potently and irresistibly to children, but wonder is not of an age but something we carry with us all our lives."

Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in 1849 in Cheetham, England. Her father died in 1852, and the family immigrated in 1865 to near Knoxville, Tennessee. Frances wrote to help earn money for the family, and published stories in magazines from 1868. Her mother died in 1870, and she married Swan Burnett in 1872. They lived for two years in Paris, having two sons, Lionel and Vivian, then settled in Washington D.C. Frances wrote novels to critical and public acclaim, in the form of both children's and romantic adult fiction. She wrote and helped produce stage versions of her two successful books, Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. Lionel died of tuberculosis in 1890, after which Frances relapsed into depression. In the mid-1890s she bought Great Maytham Hall in Kent, England, inspiring her to write The Secret Garden. In 1898, after two years living separately, the Burnetts were divorced; in 1900 she married Stephen Townsend, but divorced him in 1902. She settled soon after in Nassau County, Long Island, where she continued to write, and died there in 1924.