Waiting for the Party: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1849-1924 Book

Not always an easy or interesting read, but that is the biographer's -- and not the subject's -- fault. (In defense of the biographer, most of her primary sources were personal letters -- and the letter-writing style of Victorians tended to be a bit flowery, not to mention that all letters are full of inconsequential things.)

Despite the enduring popularity of The Secret Garden -- one of THE most perfect children's books, in my opinion -- I didn't quite realize what a popular and prolific writer Burnett had been in her very long heyday. Her own rags-to-riches story is every bit as interesting -- and sometimes improbable -- as that of any of her heroines. Just the fact that her family emigrated from Manchester to Knoxville, Tennessee (at the very end of the Civil War) boggles the mind. As does the fact that she sold her first story at the age of 18, and never stopped writing until the end of her eventful, well-travelled life. She was the middle child of five children; she came from a lower middle-class family, and her father died when she was three. There was absolutely no reason that she should have been such an extraordinary person, and yet she did have an extraordinary imagination. Also, she was one of those rare people who never really forgot how she thought and felt when a child.