The Secret Garden is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett first published as a book in 1911, after a version was published as an American magazine serial beginning in 1910. Set in England, it is one of Burnett's most popular novels and is considered a classic of English children's literature. Several stage and film adaptations have been made.
The American edition was published by Stokes with illustrations by Maria Louise Kirk (signed as M. L. Kirk) and the British edition by Heinemann with illustrations by Charles Heath Robinson.
At the turn of the 20th century, Mary Lennox is a sickly and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her and make an effort to ignore the girl. She is cared for by servants, who allow her to become a spoiled, aggressive, and selfish child.
After a cholera epidemic kills her parents and the servants, Mary is discovered alive but alone in the empty house. She briefly lives with an English clergyman and his family in India before she is sent to Yorkshire, in England, to live with Archibald Craven, a wealthy uncle whom she has never met, at his isolated house, Misselthwaite Manor...
Frances Hodgson Burnett, f. Frances Eliza Hodgson, född 24 november 1849 i Manchester, England, Storbritannien, död 29 oktober 1924 i Plandome, New York, USA, var en brittisk-amerikansk författare, framförallt av litteratur för barn.
Hennes mest kända böcker är Lille Lorden (Little Lord Fauntleroy, 1886), Den lilla prinsessan (1905) och Den hemliga trädgården (1909).
Efter faderns död emigrerade hon 1864 till USA där hon slog sig ned i Knoxville, Tennessee. Hon gifte sig 1873 med en doktor, Swan Moses Burnett, med vilken hon fick två söner. Hon skilde sig dock från maken 1898. Först 1905 blev hon amerikansk medborgare.
