Frances Hodgson Burnett 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, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.
Frances Hodgson Burnett into "A Little Princess". In 1888, Burnett returned to Manchester, where she leased a large home off Cromwell Road, had it decorated, and then turned it over to cousins to run as a boarding house, after which she moved to London, where she again took rooms, enjoyed the London season, and prepared "Phyllis" for production, a stage adaptation of "The Fortunes of Philippa Fairfax". When the play ran she was disappointed by the bad reviews, and turned to socializing. During this period she began to see more of Stephen Townsend, whom she had met during the Jubilee year. In December