Frances Hodgson Burnett In 1936 a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honour in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous "Secret Garden" characters, Mary and Dickon. Frances Eliza Hodgson was born at 141 York Street in Cheetham, Manchester. She was the third of five children of Edwin Hodgson, an ironmonger from Doncaster in Yorkshire, and his wife Eliza Boond, from a well-to-do Manchester family. Hodgson owned a business in Deansgate, selling ironmongery and brass goods. The family lived comfortably, employing a maid and a nurse-maid. Frances had two older brothers and two younger sisters. In
Frances Hodgson Burnett in the past, she turned to writing as a source of income and began to write "A Lady of Quality". "A Lady of Quality", published in 1896, was to become the first of a series of successful adult historical novels, which was followed in 1899 with "In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim"; and in 1901 she had published "The Making of a Marchioness" and "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst." In 1898, when Vivian graduated from Harvard, she divorced Swan Burnett. Officially the cause for the divorce was given to be desertion, but actually Burnett and Swan had orchestrated the