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Two Little Pilgrims' Progress: A Story of the City Beautiful
The story of a little boy and girl, who, taking their small savings, leave home to visit the World's Fair. This is their Pilgrims' Progress and their interesting adventures.
174 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1895
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About the author
Frances Hodgson Burnett
1,609 books5,051 followersFrances Eliza Hodgson Burnett was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911).
Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 4 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan M. Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), 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.
Beginning in the 1880s, Burnett began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her elder son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townesend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.
In 1936, a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honor in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.
Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 4 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan M. Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), 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.
Beginning in the 1880s, Burnett began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her elder son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townesend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, New York, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.
In 1936, a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honor in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 3, 2026
I liked the fact that this is about the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition - and it was written so close to the actual event. (So far I've read this (1895), Paula (1939), and The Great Wheel (1957). How many more can there be? Quite a lot, actually. Have a look at The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide.)
Anyway, I liked the twins, Meg and Rob, and their "even twinner" twinness. I liked the free-range self-reliance of the two of them just up and going to the fair. Unfortunately, the sappy sentimental stuff with John Holt (not the unschooling guy, more's the pity) and the mind-boggling, belief-straining resolution (I really wish that Aunt Matilda were more involved) dragged things down in the last third. I also longed for more description about the fair itself.
This book isn't rated up there with The Secret Garden and A Little Princess and Fauntleroy for good reason.
Illustrations by Reginald Birch are great, in lovely blue ink. This particular edition, a facsimile of the original, was done by University Microfilms, of all people (now they are ProQuest, I mean Ex Libris, I mean Clarivate, but at the time were owned by Xerox), is a pleasure to hold and read. I'll have to see if there are more children's books done by them around this time (1966).
Anyway, I liked the twins, Meg and Rob, and their "even twinner" twinness. I liked the free-range self-reliance of the two of them just up and going to the fair. Unfortunately, the sappy sentimental stuff with John Holt (not the unschooling guy, more's the pity) and the mind-boggling, belief-straining resolution (I really wish that Aunt Matilda were more involved) dragged things down in the last third. I also longed for more description about the fair itself.
This book isn't rated up there with The Secret Garden and A Little Princess and Fauntleroy for good reason.
Illustrations by Reginald Birch are great, in lovely blue ink. This particular edition, a facsimile of the original, was done by University Microfilms, of all people (now they are ProQuest, I mean Ex Libris, I mean Clarivate, but at the time were owned by Xerox), is a pleasure to hold and read. I'll have to see if there are more children's books done by them around this time (1966).
March 20, 2012
A cute book. I like Burnett's writing. The Princess and the Goblin was one of my favorite books when I was younger, and The Little Princess is a classic. This book was sentimental and predictable but more of a modern-day fairy tale in that the main characters were of their time (1895) rather than of an indistinguishable time in some far-off past. The hero and heroine are twin brother and sister and save up to travel to the Chicago World's Fair. It's historical and entertaining in its way. I enjoyed it.
May 19, 2020
Reading very carefully. So thrilled to find I had a 1st edition of this book. About half way through and I am really enjoying they way the author has combined a telling of Pilgrims Progress with the first World Fair in Chicago and how she relates Paul Bunyan's character of Christian with the characters of two twins in "modern" (1895)day...krb 5/1/20
May 20, 2015
Ann Thwaite called TLPP FHB's "worst children's book," and that statement has merit, although her earlier children's stories are awful (and anything's better than Lady of Quality). Three years before the telephone's debut at the 1876 World's Fair, Frances Hodgson Burnett has invented phoning it in. Robin and Meg are twin orphans who live on their aunt's big, bustling farm where no one pays much attention to them and they're free to run wild in the fields and eat hearty meals and read old books in the hay loft, which they call the Straw Parlor. Worst childhood ever, am I right? FHB takes pains to show how deprived these children are, without adult affection and further schooling. (FHB spent her life between England and New England and it shows. TLPP is set in Illinois and FHB's supposition that there are no public schools proximate to prosperous farms with many employees and a moderate walk from the railway station doesn't hold.) So, furthering the plot, Robin overhears one of the farm workers describing the World's Fair and from then on he and Meg magpie all the newspapers and magazine clippings they can get on it (further belieing the dearth of available reading matter on the farm) until it occurs to them that they could actually travel to the World's Fair, it being one hundred miles away, and they each ask for gender-appropriate jobs doing farm labor and are granted them at the pay of $1 a week, and, oh!, how FHB wrings her hands about the hard work these two children do because they have asked to do it in exchange for renumeration. But Robin and Meg feel their ceaseless toil more heavily than other children because they are not real children: they are a cross between the simpering, sentimental waifs that FHB was often accused of writing but rarely actually wrote, and the human embodiment of the coming century. Robin and Meg will grow up to be the handsome young people on the cover of an agricultural brochure, Robin will be the man in a stock photo holding a test tube, and Meg will grow up to be the hearty woman holding a sheaf of wheat on a statue above a public building. FHB makes it abundantly clear that Robin and Meg are generically exceptional in the way of the new century, so they deserve their modest circumstances less than most. Sara Crewe would have given her arms for this childhood. Soon Meg and Robin are subject to a desperate poverty I know all too well, the appalling privation of budget travel: you can't eat out as much as you'd like, you have to stay somewhere cheapish, some museums are kind of expensive. It's shocking! I felt Robin and Meg's vacation pain as FHB hammered it home over and over again while they ride the train to Chicago and buy their tickets to the White City, which she describes as in a tourist brochure. (If I remember correctly, FHB never quite made it to Chicago in 1893.) Their first day is amazing, and they keep on bumping into a rich man who is there alone and starts following them. Meg tells fairy stories about the exhibits and they marvel at everything and eat sandwiches. In the evening, Meg and Robin walk down side streets until they meet a kindly, poor woman on a stoop and ask if they could board there for the night. Robin and Meg enthrall her hunchbacked son, who (after a run in with his violent alcoholic father and a bout of spontaneous generosity, because life isn't perfect) goes to the fair with them the next day. The rich man follows them again and eventually insinuates himself into their company and buys them all a giant lunch and takes them to the Midway and the Ferris wheel and all the things they didn't think they could ever afford, and when the children are worn out from jolly fairgoing, the stranger takes them back to his hotel room... and they all have a good night's sleep. Then everybody goes to the fair where they see cannibals and the agricultural building and eventually the stranger (who turns out to be another prosperous Illinois farmer whose wife was super-excited about the fair but died before she could go) takes custody of Meg and Robin buys them new books and less practical clothing. I have the cool 1897 reprint of Two Little Pilgrims' Progress that was part of Scribners' FHB reprint run.
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April 12, 2024
I would start with caveats. I'm going through a "The Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett" compilation. This is definitely not one of her better novelettes. It starts off as a tale riffing on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, but honestly, I think the book (Progress), although a renowned religious classic, was already a dated work in 1894, when Burnett wrote Two Little Pilgrim's Progress.
Clearly, Burnett is paying homage to the work, while returning to the tropes that were staples of her literary style: the themes of neglect and poverty, undaunted spirits with elevated expectations, a wealthy benefactor unhappy with present circumstance, and the unerring foresight to visualize better for himself.
Felix and Felicity are twin siblings with the misfortune of having survived their parents, watched over by an aunt with the charity to take her brother's children and provide them with room and board, but little else in the ways of education, supervision, and affection. Although the siblings are appreciative of their aunt, they wish for more. They see a poster advertising the World's Fair and that transforms their lives of drudgery by giving them purpose. They save their salaries for over a year in order to attend which allows them to meet people that will transform their lives.
The story is meant to be magical, whimsical, mystical, Cinderella-rags-to-riches, but in an entire collection of similar stories, told in the same voice, it pales in comparison to Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Secret Garden, and A Little Princess. It's an OK story, but not a heck of a lot more.
Clearly, Burnett is paying homage to the work, while returning to the tropes that were staples of her literary style: the themes of neglect and poverty, undaunted spirits with elevated expectations, a wealthy benefactor unhappy with present circumstance, and the unerring foresight to visualize better for himself.
Felix and Felicity are twin siblings with the misfortune of having survived their parents, watched over by an aunt with the charity to take her brother's children and provide them with room and board, but little else in the ways of education, supervision, and affection. Although the siblings are appreciative of their aunt, they wish for more. They see a poster advertising the World's Fair and that transforms their lives of drudgery by giving them purpose. They save their salaries for over a year in order to attend which allows them to meet people that will transform their lives.
The story is meant to be magical, whimsical, mystical, Cinderella-rags-to-riches, but in an entire collection of similar stories, told in the same voice, it pales in comparison to Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Secret Garden, and A Little Princess. It's an OK story, but not a heck of a lot more.
September 17, 2015
A pubdom title I volunteer-proofread for Project Gutenberg. I'd never heard of this title by Frances Hodgson Burnett before. It was unsentimental but tender-hearted. (And from a more innocent time, when a rich single man adopting two preteen orphans wouldn't have seemed creepy or suspicious.)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews