Marsha Norman she could not have written it. According to an interview in "The New York Times", "Ms. Norman stayed away from the theater and turned to screenplays, including a 1986 movie adaptation of " 'Night, Mother" that starred Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft and failed to impress critics. She was in high demand in Hollywood, though not always for films that she liked, or that studios would approve." Norman wrote the book and lyrics for the musical "The Secret Garden", an adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel "The Secret Garden", and won the Tony Award for Best Book in 1991.
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