Frances Hodgson Burnett dissolution of their marriage some years earlier. Swan took his own apartment and ceased to live with Burnett, so that after a period of two years she could plead desertion as a reason for the divorce. The press was critical, calling her a New Woman, with "The Washington Post" writing that the divorce resulted from Burnett's "advanced ideas regarding the duties of a wife and the rights of women". From the mid-1890s she lived in England at Great Maytham Hall—which had a large garden where she indulged her love for flowers—where she made her home for the next decade, although
Frances Hodgson Burnett overcrowding and poverty that "defied description", according to Friedrich Engels, who lived in Manchester at the time. Frances had an active imagination, writing stories she made up in old notebooks. One of her favourite books was Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and she spent many hours acting out scenes from the story. Frances and her siblings were sent to be educated at The Select Seminary for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, where she was described as "precocious" and "romantic". She had an active social life and enjoyed telling stories to her friends and cousins; in her mother she found