Frances Hodgson Burnett
Personal Information
Description
Frances Hodgson Burnett was best known as an English playwright and author. Frances Eliza Hodgson was born on November 24, 1849, at Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England, to Eliza Boond and Edwin Hodgson. She was the middle child of five, with two older brothers and two younger sisters. Frances grew up in a comfortable home. Mr. Hodgson sold brass goods to upper class households, and the family had a maid, a nurse-maid, and a horse and carriage. However, in the early 1850's when Frances was only three or four years old, her father died of a stroke, and the family was forced to sell their house and move. Her mother carried on the business, and Frances was often left in the care of her grandmother, who taught her to read. Her future as a writer might have begun here. When she was about sixteen, the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. From then until she was nineteen, Frances supported them by selling her stories to magazines. In September 1873, she married Swan Burnett. The couple moved to Paris for two years and had there two sons. In 1892, following the death her son Lionel from tuberculosis, Frances suffered severe depression. In 1898, she divorced Swan Burnett and remarried two years later; this second marriage only lasted a year. Frances settled in Long Island, New York, where she lived for the rest of her life. She died in 1924 and rests in Roslyn Cemetery in Greenvale, New York, next to her other son, Vivian.
Books
The children's book
Shortlisted for the Man Booker PrizeA spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize--winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children's book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.When Olive Wellwood's oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum--a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive's magical tales--she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends.But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house--and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children--conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives--of adults and children alike--unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.Taking us from the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, The Children's Book is a deeply affecting story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day. It is a masterly literary achievement by one of our most essential writers.From the Hardcover edition.
Esmeralda
The troubles of Queen Silver-bell
Two short stories. In the first Queen Silver-Bell loses her temper and becomes Queen Crosspatch. In the second a little girl is changed into a rook to hatch abandoned eggs.
Editha's burglar
A young girl discovers a burglar in the house and persuades the thief to take her own possessions instead of those belonging to her father.
The Pretty Sister Of Jose
The Pretty Sister of Jose (1889) is a romance set in Spain. The novel was penned by Frances Hodgson Burnett, an author better known for such British-based fare as Little Lord Fauntleroy. The Pretty Sister of Jose is the daughter of a philandering Spanish aristocrat. Soured on all men because of her father's behavior, the heroine spurns every one of her suitors. That the "right man" eventually comes along is as inevitable as the sun rising in the East.
The lost prince of Samavia
Marco Loristan, a twelve-year-old refugee, and his friend, a hunchback orphan named The Rat, embark on a dangerous journey across Europe to bring freedom to Marco's beleaguered homeland of Samavia.
The spring cleaning
Fairies save the day for a little girl in need of primroses.
Racketty-packetty house and other stories
A collection of short stories, including "The Story of Prince Fairyfoot," "The Proud Little Grain of Wheat," and "Behind the White Brick."
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Cedric himself knew nothing whatever about it. It had never been even mentioned to him. He knew that his papa had been an Englishman, because his mamma had told him so; but then his papa had died when he was so little a boy that he could not remember very much about him, except that he was big, and had blue eyes and a long mustache, and that it was a splendid thing to be carried around the room on his shoulder.