An ink illustration with white watercolor highlights showing a smiling lion standing on his hind legs, hugging and swinging around a grinning boy

James Daugherty’s original illustration for Andy and the Lion

Cover of a closed book displaying the title and a color illustration of a mouse bowing to a cockroach, both of whom are standing upright and wearing clothes.

Perez and Martina, a Portorican Folk Tale

A stack of papers as part of a manuscript draft of The Secret Garden, handwritten in cursive by Frances Hodgson Burnett on lined paper with pencil.

Photograph by Robert Kato

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924)
Manuscript draft of The Secret Garden
1910
Frances Hodgson Burnett Manuscripts, Manuscripts and Archives Division

Manuscript draft of The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote swiftly and confidently, a habit acquired in youth when she sold her first stories to help support her widowed mother and family. “My object is remuneration,” the writer, still in her teens, boldly informed the first magazine editor to be offered her work.

Two actual gardens served as backdrops for the writing of this manuscript. Burnett had her first inklings of the novel while working at her writing table in the rose garden at Great Maytham Hall, the manor house in Rolvenden, Kent, that she made her home in 1898 after initiating divorce proceedings against her first husband. She later composed the book while laying out the garden and grounds of her next and last home, in Plandome Manor, New York.

Holding Division: Frances Hodgson Burnett Manuscripts, Manuscripts and Archives Division

Catalog Record: View record

Currently on View at Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

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