Frances Hodgson Burnett Frances Hodgson Burnett Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-born 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
Frances Hodgson Burnett the thought of continuing to live with Townsend at Maytham, Burnett rented a house in London for the winter of 1900–1901. There she socialized with friends and wrote. She 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 1902, after a summer of socializing and filling Maytham with house-guests, she