"Hugely successful in her own time for adult novels and plays, Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) would be astounded to find that she is remembered for a handful of books for children, but most of all for The Secret Garden, which has been enormously popular for generations. This biography - the first to have the full cooperation of Burnett's descendents and relatives - examines her life with lively intelligence, sensitivity, and fascinating new, never-before-published material." "Burnett's life was full of those reversals of fortune that mark her work. Following modest beginnings in mid-Victorian Manchester, she arrived in post-Civil War Tennessee at the age of fifteen with her widowed mother and two sisters. Burnett was the breadwinner of the family from the age of seventeen, eventually publishing a total of fifty-two books and writing and producing thirteen plays. She made and spent a fortune in her lifetime, was generous and profligate, yet anxious about money and obsessively hardworking." "Constantly restless and inventive, Burnett had a personal life as complex as her professional one. Her first marriage to a southern doctor disintegrated as a result of her notorious flirtations and a scandalous affair, and her subsequent marriage to an English doctor-turned-actor suffered a similar fate. She understood the intensity and loneliness of the thoughtful child, but was herself a largely absent mother of two sons - overwhelmed by guilt when tragedy struck one of them; the other never got over being the model for Little Lord Fauntleroy."--Jacket.