Frances Hodgson Burnett suffered a physical collapse that autumn. She returned to America, and in the winter of 1902 entered a sanatorium. There she told Townsend she would no longer live with him, and the marriage ended. She returned to Maytham two years later in June 1904. Maytham Hall had a series of walled gardens and in the rose garden she wrote several books; it was there she had the idea for "The Secret Garden", mainly written in Buile Hill Park while visiting Manchester. In 1905 "A Little Princess" was published, after she had reworked the play into a novel. Once again Burnett
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