The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, first published in 1911, is one of the most beloved children's novels in the English language and a quiet masterpiece of healing and renewal. Mary Lennox is ten years old, sour-faced, neglected, and orphaned in colonial India, when she is sent to live with her reclusive uncle at Misselthwaite Manor on the Yorkshire moors. The house is huge and half-empty, filled with locked rooms and stranger silences, and Mary has been told to stay out of the way. But the moor air, the gruff kindness of housekeeper Martha, and the curious sound of crying somewhere down the corridor begin to wake her up. When a friendly robin shows her a key buried in the soil, Mary discovers a walled garden that has been locked and forgotten for ten years, ever since the death of her aunt. As she and the cheerful Yorkshire boy Dickon coax the garden back to life, Mary also befriends her sickly cousin Colin, hidden upstairs and convinced he is dying. Burnett's novel braids together themes of grief, neglect, the restorative power of nature, and the simple miracle of being seen by someone who cares. More than a century later, The Secret Garden still feels alive, generous, and unmistakably its own thing.
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What you might want to know about The Secret Garden
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
After a cholera outbreak in colonial India kills her parents, sour ten-year-old Mary Lennox is sent to her uncle Archibald Craven's Yorkshire estate Misselthwaite Manor. There she finds a robin, a locked walled garden, a moor boy named Dickon, and a hidden cousin named Colin.
Yes. The Secret Garden was published in 1911 and is in the public domain. Free editions are available legally through Project Gutenberg.
Yes, multiple times. Notable adaptations include the 1949 film, the 1993 Agnieszka Holland film starring Maggie Smith, and the 2020 film with Colin Firth. The 1993 version is widely considered the strongest.
The Secret Garden was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, published in 1911 by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
The Secret Garden is 256 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Secret Garden takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
The Secret Garden is a standalone novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, not part of a series.
The Secret Garden is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
