Frances Hodgson Burnett was a celebrated English-American author of primarily children’s literature who is best remembered for The Secret Garden (1909). Born in Manchester on November 24, 1849, her family expatriated to Tennessee after the American Civil War and the death of her father. Though she was poor with a limited education, Burnett turned to mailing stories into magazines to earn money to provide for her family. Eventually, she had stories printed regularly in publications like Scribner’s Monthly and Harper’s Bazaar — primarily pulpy, thrilling stories just for the paycheck.

In 1873, she married her childhood friend Swan Burnett, more for the sake of convention than love, and with the eventual financial support began writing novels more to her own tastes. Her magnum opus of her lifetime, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), came out of a desire to write something that her two young sons might enjoy. In the story, Little Lord Fauntleroy is an American child who discovers he’s actually a member of British aristocracy, and Burnett took great pleasure in describing the detail of luxurious Victorian life, as someone drawn to extravagance and displays of wealth herself. The widespread commercial success of Little Lord Fauntleroy and her subsequent theatrical adaptation made Burnett a celebrity in the United States and abroad.

Her work turned more soul-searching and spiritual after the death of her older son and divorce from Swan Burnett, leading to The Secret Garden’s publication in 1911. By the time of her death in 1924, Frances Hodgson Burnett had cemented her legacy as one of the most widely read and beloved children’s authors of the English language.