Frances Hodgson Burnett

Burnett was born in 1849 to a wealthy merchant father; she was the third of five children. Her father died when she was only four years old, and her mother moved the family to the U.S. to settle in Tennessee. As a young woman, Burnett began publishing stories in magazines to help support the family. She married Dr. Swan Burnett in 1872. They lived in Paris for two years while he finished his medical schooling, and Burnett gave birth to her two sons there. The couple moved back and forth across the Atlantic several times. While her husband worked on getting his medical practice started in Washington, D.C., Burnett published her first novel, That Lass o' Lowrie's, to positive reviews in 1877. In the 1880s she became interested in Christian Science, Spiritualism, and Theosophy, which influenced her later works and especially, The Secret Garden. Burnett and her husband divorced in 1898. The two agreed to live separately for two years so that Burnett could list abandonment as a legal reason for divorce, though this earned Burnett scorn in the papers. She lived in England at a manor house that inspired Misselthwaite Manor (and very briefly remarried) until 1907, when she returned to the New York area, continued to write, and lived lavishly until her death in 1924.