Frances Hodgson Burnett - Portland Place, London, UK
N 51° 31.289 W 000° 08.747
30U E 698007 N 5711680
The Greater London Council blue plaque, to Frances Hodgson Burnett, is on the west side of Portland Place.
Waymark Code: WMHXJA
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 08/24/2013
Views: 4
The Frances Hodgson Burnett plaque, that is in good condition but spoiled by
some poor painting around the edge, reads:
Greater London Council
Frances
Hodgson
Burnett
1849 - 1924
Writer
lived here
The
Poem Hunter website tells us about this writer:
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29
October 1924) was an English playwright and author. She is best known for
her children's stories, in particular The Secret Garden (published in 1911),
A Little Princess (published in 1905), and Little Lord Fauntleroy (published
in 1885-6).
Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, near Manchester, England. After
her father died in 1852, the family eventually fell on straitened
circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling near
Knoxville, Tennessee. There, Frances began writing to help earn money for
the family, publishing stories in magazines from the age of 19. In 1870 her
mother died and in 1872 she married Swan Burnett, who became a medical
doctor after which they lived in Paris for two years where their two sons
were born before returning to the US to live in Washington D.C. There she
began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowries), was
published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and
made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult
novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to
produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess.
Burnett enjoyed socializing and lived a lavish lifestyle. Beginning in the
1880s, she began to travel to England frequently and bought a home there in
the 1890s where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her oldest son, Lionel, died of
tuberculosis in 1892, which caused a relapse of the depression she struggled
with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898 and married
Stephen Townsend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. Towards the end of her
life she settled in Long Island, where she died in 1924 and is buried in
Roslyn Cemetery, on Long Island.
In 1936 a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her
honour in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two
famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.
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