Beyond the Secret Garden
The definitive and revealing biography of the author of The Secret Garden.
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s favourite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom.
On the surface, Frances’ life was extremely successful: hosting regular literary salons in her home and travelling frequently between properties in the UK and America. But behind the colourful personal and social life, she was a complex and contradictory character. She lost both parents by her twenty-first birthday, Henry James called her "the most heavenly of women" although avoided her; prominent people admired her and there were many friendships as well as an ill-advised marriage to a much younger man that ended in heartache. Her success was punctuated by periods of depression, in one instance brought on by the tragic loss of her eldest son to consumption.
Beyond the Secret Garden.
I'm not much into reading Biographies but this appealed, not only as there is a new release of a film The Secret Garden, but it was one of my favourite books as a child, but I was disappointed to find so little written about The Secret Garden. I did see that this was originally published as Waiting for the Party in 1974 and updated to coincide with the new film.
It was fascinating to read about how she dealt with publishers on both sides of the Atlantic and how copyright was a huge problem. It was also interesting to see how children's literature evolved as it's own genre, before most of these books were aimed at adults to be read to children. Certainly the language of a lot of books I read as a child, Black Beauty and What Katy Did, have much more of an adult language to them than the likes of Enid Blyton.
At times I felt the book a little dry and too detailed and almost confusing.
An amazing amount of travel by someone in those days, very driven almost to the point of manic. No wonder that she and Swan separated. So sad that she lost one son and Vivian died relatively young at 61. She at least maintained good relations with him and her two sisters.
Thank you to NetGalley and the Pulisher for my ARC in return for an honest review.