Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born on 24 November 1849 in Manchester, England. Her father died when she was only four and her formal education was abruptly cut short. Her family decided to migrate to the USA, where they were forced to live in a small, isolated home Hodgson nicknamed ‘Noah’s Ark’.

She began writing commercially in order to earn money for her family and built a strong literary community in Washington D.C., writing several successful short stories, novels and plays. Hodgson began periodically travelling to England with her sons. It was during these trips that she started working on an early version of A Little Princess and met Stephen Townsend, who would later become her second husband.

In 1902, she was admitted to a sanatorium in America after a sudden bout of illness. A few years later, she permanently moved back to the USA, where she would live until her death, on 29 October 1924.