Secret Garden (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read online

  Table of Contents

  FROM THE PAGES OF THE SECRET GARDEN

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

  THE WORLD OF FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT AND THE SECRET GARDEN

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - There’s No One Left

  Chapter 2 - Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

  Chapter 3 - Across the Moor

  Chapter 4 - Martha

  Chapter 5 - The Cry in the Corridor

  Chapter 6 - “There Was Some One Crying—There Was”

  Chapter 7 - The Key of the Garden

  Chapter 8 - The Robin Who Showed the Way

  Chapter 9 - The Strangest House

  Chapter 10 - Dickon

  Chapter 11 - The Nest of the Missel Thrush

  Chapter 12 - “Might I Have a Bit of Earth?”

  Chapter 13 - “I Am Colin”

  Chapter 14 - A Young Rajah

  Chapter 15 - Nest Building

  Chapter 16 - “I Won’t!” Said Mary

  Chapter 17 - A Tantrum

  Chapter 18 - “Tha’ Munnot Waste No Time”

  Chapter 19 - “It Has Come!”

  Chapter 20 - “I Shall Live Forever”

  Chapter 21 - Ben Weatherstaff

  Chapter 22 - When the Sun Went Down

  Chapter 23 - Magic

  Chapter 24 - “Let Them Laugh”

  Chapter 25 - The Curtain

  Chapter 26 - “It’s Mother!”

  Chapter 27 - In the Garden

  ENDNOTES

  INSPIRED BY THE SECRET GARDEN

  COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

  FOR FURTHER READING

  FROM THE PAGES OF THE SECRET GARDEN

  When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too.

  (page 7)

  It had not been the custom that Mistress Mary should do anything but stand and allow herself to be dressed like a doll, but before she was ready for breakfast she began to suspect that her life at Misselthwaite Manor would end by teaching her a number of things quite new to her.

  (page 27)

  “Would you make friends with me?” she said to the robin just as if she was speaking to a person. “Would you?”

  (page 36)

  “I am the first person who has spoken in here for ten years.”

  (page 65)

  Mary was an odd, determined little person, and now she had something interesting to be determined about, she was very much absorbed, indeed. She worked and dug and pulled up weeds steadily, only becoming more pleased with her work every hour instead of tiring of it.

  (page 73)

  As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.

  (page 80)

  “I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father won’t let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live.”

  (page 102)

  “I don’t think I ever really wanted to see anything before, but I want to see that garden. I want the key dug up. I want the door unlocked.”

  (page 105)

  “No lad could get well as thought them sort o’ things.”

  (page 127)

  “He’s having one of those tantrums the nurse calls hysterics. How awful it sounds.”

  (page 136)

  “Mary! Dickon! I shall get well! And I shall live forever and ever and ever!”

  (page 164)

  She was saying it to Colin because she wanted to make Magic and keep him on his feet looking like that. She could not bear that he should give in before Ben Weatherstaff. He did not give in. She was uplifted by a sudden feeling that he looked quite beautiful in spite of his thinness.

  (page 175)

  They always called it Magic and indeed it seemed like it in the months that followed—the wonderful months—the radiant months—the amazing ones. Oh! the things which happened in that garden! If you have never had a garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there.

  (page 180)

  One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body.

  (page 214)

  By his side with his head up in the air and his eyes full of laughter walked as strongly and steadily as any boy in Yorkshire—Master Colin!

  (page 227)

  Published by Barnes & Noble Books

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  New York, NY 10011

  www.barnesandnoble.com/classics

  The Secret Garden was first published in 1911.

  Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction,

  Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions,

  and For Further Reading.

  Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

  Copyright © 2005 by Jill Muller.

  Note on Frances Hodgson Burnett, The World of

  Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Secret Garden, Inspired by

  The Secret Garden, and Comments & Questions

  Copyright © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,

  without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics

  colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.

  The Secret Garden

  ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-277-2 ISBN-10: 1-59308-277-0

  eISBN : 978-1-411-43312-0

  LC Control Number 2005922120

  Produced and published in conjunction with:

  Fine Creative Media, Inc.

  322 Eighth Avenue

  New York, NY 10001

  Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

  Printed in the United States of America

  QM

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

  Imagine children’s books as popular as the Harry Potter series is today, and you have some idea of the iconic status Frances Hodgson Burnett earned from her writing more than a century ago. Frances was born in Manchester, England, in 1849. Her prosperous father owned a home-furnishings business, supported by customers made wealthy through the Manchester textile industry. But when her father died in 1853 and then cotton imports ceased when the American Civil War began, Frances’s family became almost penniless. To survive, her mother moved her five children to rural Tennessee in 1865.

  A naturally gifted storyteller, Frances charmed family and friends with her keen imagination. In spite of little formal schooling, she read avidly, and it was not long before she realized she might aid her struggling family by selling stories to popular ladies’ magazines. She sent her work to Godey’s Lady’s Book, and in 1868 Godey’s published two stories for $35—the first of what would be a lifelong stream of handsome paychecks. When her mother died in 18
70, Frances was the family’s chief supporter, a role she would play throughout much of her life. Indeed, when she married a Tennessee doctor, Swan Burnett, in 1873, it was she who paid their way to Europe so Swan could study medicine.

  Within a few years, Frances gave birth to two boys, Lionel and Vivian, and released her first major works, including the critically acclaimed That Lass o’ Lowrie’s (1877). The conclusion of Lass, in which her characters leave the working-class oppression of the coal-mining culture of Lancashire for a peaceful garden in Kent, introduces an abiding theme for Burnett: the healing power of gardens. Noted by critics as an up-and-coming author, Burnett was also a prominent hostess in Washington, D.C. She was popular and charming, but the numerous roles she played—prolific writer, the family’s main breadwinner, mother, wife, and society hostess—were overwhelming at times, as she revealed in her 1883 novel Through One Administration. Yet Burnett loved to work and travel, and she spent considerable time away from her husband and sons. In 1879, shuttling between the United States and Europe, she published a more serious work of fiction, Haworth’s, which was followed by her first published writing for children, in the magazine St. Nicholas.

  Burnett wrote more than fifty novels during her life, but it was the publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1886 that determined the course of her future works and her place in literary history as a writer of children’s fiction. Although the book received an ambivalent critical response, it was a phenomenon in America and Europe, selling out printing after printing and earning Burnett enormous fame and fortune. After the dissolution of her first and second marriages and the 1890 death of her eldest son, Lionel, Burnett wrote the classic for which she is most remembered, The Secret Garden (1911). Its central theme—that the mind can heal the body—reflected Burnett’s own struggles with illness and despair. But regardless of the sadness she endured in reality, Burnett was determined to create only happy endings for her characters.

  She remained prolific throughout and after World War I, although her Victorian style had become outdated in the eyes of many critics. Surrounded by her family and many friends, Burnett discarded such criticism, writing the successful works T. Tembarom (1913) and The Lost Prince (1915), doing charity work, and tending the luxurious gardens at her homes on Long Island and Bermuda. Frances Hodgson Burnett died of heart failure in Plandome (Long Island), New York, on October 29, 1924.

  THE WORLD OF FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT AND THE SECRET GARDEN

  1849 Frances Hodgson Burnett is born on November 24 in Manchester , England. Her father, Edwin, owns a home-furnishings shop whose profits provide a good life for his growing family . Henry David Thoreau publishes “Resistance to Civil Government ,” the original title of “Civil Disobedience.”

  1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter appears.

  1851 Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick.

  1853 When Edwin dies, Frances’s mother, Eliza, runs her husband’s company to support their five children.

  1855 Eliza and the children move to Islington Square, a bleak area bordering the industrial section of Manchester. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is published.

  1859 Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities are published.

  1861 The American Civil War begins. Dickens’s Great Expectations is published.

  1863 President Abraham Lincoln, through the Emancipation Proclamation , abolishes slavery in America.

  1865 After struggling for many years to preserve the family business , Eliza moves with her children to her brother’s log cabin in New Market, Tennessee. Young Frances falls in love with Tennessee’s backcountry. When not exploring the natural world, she reads and writes stories, testing them on her friends and family. She takes a job teaching school, for which she is paid in food. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is published.

  1868 In the wake of the Civil War, the family has barely enough money to make ends meet. Frances discovers her love of writing and attempts to help by selling her stories. Godey’s Lady’s Book, a popular women’s magazine, publishes “Miss Carruthers’ Engagement” and “Hearts and Diamonds,” launching Frances’s literary career; she will write more than fifty books

  and numerous dramatizations of her fiction. Louisa May Alcott publishes Little Women.

  1869 The family moves to a small house in Knoxville, Tennessee.

  1870 Eliza Hodgson dies. Frances continues to support the family by publishing stories.

  1871 A British Act of Parliament legalizes labor unions.

  1872 A story, “Surly Tim’s Troubles,” is published by Scribner’s Monthly, which will issue more of Frances’s writing than any other magazine. A young local doctor, Swan Burnett, falls in love with Frances. When he proposes marriage, she somewhat apprehensively accepts, fearing he’ll be devastated if she refuses. Her feelings about marriage remain ambivalent. George Eliot’s Middlemarch is published.

  1873 A first full-length work, Dolly, is serialized in Peterson’s magazine . Swan and Frances marry in Tennessee and honeymoon in New York, where Frances also meets with publishers.

  1874 A son, Lionel, is born. Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is published anonymously.

  1875 Burnett enters into a lucrative writing contract that permits the family to live in Paris while her husband studies medicine. In addition to raising Lionel, Frances writes full-time. She is remarkably productive, but the experience exhausts her. Despite the fact that Congress passes a Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in places of public accommodation, the first law enforcing segregation on trains is passed in Tennessee, and segregation laws multiply throughout the South.

  1876 A second son, Vivian, is born in France. The family returns to Tennessee, where Frances raises the children and writes, while Swan moves to Washington, D.C., to begin his eye-and-ear medical practice. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer appears . Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.

  1877 The family joins Swan in the capital. Frances enters a period of intense work, creativity, and output. Her fame and earnings steadily increase, making her the breadwinner of the family. Burnett’s first novel, about Lancashire mining culture, That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, is published, as is Surly Tim, and Other Stories. Henry James’s The American is published. Queen Victoria is proclaimed empress of India.

  1879 Haworth’s is published. In order to protect its copyright and royalties in England, Frances travels to Canada to fulfill the legal requirement of standing on the soil of a British dominion on the day of the British publication. Burnett forges friendships with contemporary writers Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott.

  1880 Louisiana is published.

  1881 A Fair Barbarian is published. Esmerelda, a play written with actor/dramatist William Gillette, is produced in New York. President James Garfield takes office, and Frances, Swan, and the boys socialize at the White House.

  1883 Burnett publishes the novel Through One Administration, a revealing reflection of her Washington, D.C., social life and her unhappy marriage. Critics compare her writing to that of Henry James for its portrayal of contradictions in human nature. Constantly traveling on work-related business, Frances is often on the verge of nervous exhaustion. Although she does not reveal her problems, her marriage begins to suffer. The Supreme Court overturns the Civil Rights Act.

  1884 Burnett begins traveling more frequently to Britain and Europe , spending long periods away from her family. Her relationship with Swan begins to dissolve; she is torn between being a good mother and living independently of her children and husband. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appears.

  1885 Little Lord Fauntleroy is serialized in the magazine St. Nicholas. Its tale of a young American boy who discovers he is an English lord causes a literary sensation akin to that of today’s Harry Potter books. Mothers begin having their sons wear long curly hair and velvet suits to look like Fauntleroy. Frances dresses her own son
Vivian, the inspiration for the character, in dandyish garb. She falls ill and receives treatment from a mind healer in Boston.

  1886 Little Lord Fauntleroy is published in book form and becomes a runaway best-seller in America and Europe. Burnett grows wealthy from the sales of her books and indulges a passion for decorating houses and creating exquisite gardens.

  1887 A Woman’s Will is published, as is the story “Sara Crewe.” Burnett

  informally separates from Swan, taking her sons on a tour of Europe. Their itinerary includes a stay in London for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebration.

  1888 Frances’s stage adaptation of Fauntleroy opens in London three months after she learns of an unauthorized dramatization there. In a feat believed to be impossible at the time, she successfully sues under the Copyright Act of 1842, earning the gratitude of fellow authors. George Eastman patents the rollfilm camera.

  1889 The Pretty Sister of José is published. Frances is involved in a traffic accident and incurs a concussion that further weakens her already fragile health.

  1890 Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories is published. After months of seeking a cure for her eldest son, Lionel, Frances is devastated when he dies of tuberculosis. Perhaps in response to her son’s illness and death, Frances becomes active in children’s charities , to which she donates generous sums of money.

  1891 Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is published.