Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 - 29 October 1924) was a British novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (published in 1885-1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 3 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her remunerative writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D. C. Burnett began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews.
