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 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