What do you think?
Rate this book
One I Know Best of All
The One I Knew Best of All (1893) is a memoir written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The author covers her childhood and girlhood, taking the reader into confidence and depicting the delightful situations and circumstances of her youth. She starts her memoir with the Christmas holidays.
- GenresMemoirClassicsNonfiction
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1893
About the author
Frances Hodgson Burnett
1,588 books5,046 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 15, 2012
Last weekend I finished a library book, and since then it has been sitting on the dining room table. I’ve wanted to write about it, indeed to enthuse about it, but I knew that when I had done that I would have no excuse for not taking it back to the library. And I wasn’t quiet ready to let go.
I think you may understand my feelings if I quote a little from Warne’s Announcement list for October 1893 …
“Mrs Burnett’s story is unique in literature, being the frankly autobiographical narrative of a child up to girlhood, with its sensations and emotions as each new phase and problem of life opens to it.”
The volume I have is a later reproduction, a facsimile edition published by the same publisher, Frederick Warne & Co Ltd, in 1974. It is very lovely, and it matches my recollection of its author very nicely.
The author’s preface was a little stiff, but when I read the first words of the first chapter I was charmed, and I knew that I was in safe hands.
“I had every opportunity for knowing her well at least. We were born on the same day, we learned to toddle about together, we began our earliest observations of the world we lived in at the same period, we made the same mental remarks on people and things, and reserved to ourselves exactly the same rights of of private personal opinion.
I have not the remotest idea what she looked like. She belonged to an era when photography was not as advanced an art as it is to-day, and no picture of her was ever made. It is a well-authenticated fact that she was auburn-haired and rosy, and I can testify that she was curly, because one of my earliest recollections of her emotions is a memory of the momentarily maddening effect of a sharp, stinging jerk of the comb when the nurse was absent-minded or maladroit.”
The adult voice was there but it allowed the child, and the childish perceptions, to shine. I saw a hint of what made her into a writer, and a hint of the woman she would become.
The author’s decision to always refer to her younger self as ‘The One I Knew The Best of All’ bothered me a little at first, but it very soon felt entirely natural. Definitely a wise decision: I came to know the child and her world with the least possible distraction from the knowledge of who she grew up to be.
The story began quietly, in the nursery, with toys, a nursemaid, an occasional visitor. And slowly, as the first picture books arrived, it became more and more vibrant.
I had worried a little that family seemed absent, that the first mention of a father was when he died, but very quickly I realised that was not the case at all. the child was so secure in her home and her family that she didn’t need to mention them and she was free to explore her world.
She fell in love with her garden as soon as she set foot there …
“Was it always Spring or Summer in that enchanted Garden which, out of a whole world, has remained throughout a lifetime the Garden of Eden? Was the sun always shining? Later and more material experience of the English climate leads me to imagine that it was not always flooded and warmed with sunshine, and filled with the scent of roses and mignonette and new-mown hay and apple-blossoms and strawberries all together, and that one laid down on the grass on one’s back one could not always see that high, high world of deep blue with fleecy islets and mountains of snow drifting softly by or seeming to be quite still. That world to which somehow one seemed to belong even more than to the earth, and which drew one upward with such visions of running over the soft white hills and springing, from little island to little island, across the depths of blue which seemed a sea. But it was always so on the days the One I knew the best of all remembers the garden. This is in no doubt because, on the wet days and the windy ones, the cold days and the ugly ones, she was kept in the warm nursery and did not see the altered scene at all.”
She was fascinated by the world she saw, and utterly captivated by books that could take her in to whole other worlds …
“The Small Person used to look at them sometimes with hopeless, hungry eyes. It seemed so horribly wicked that there should be shelves of books – shelves full of them – which offered nothing to a starving creature. She was a starving creature in those days, with a positively wolfish appetite for books, though no one knew about it or understood the anguish of its gnawings. It must be plainly stated that her longings were not for “improving” books. The cultivation she gained in those days was gained quite unconsciously, through the workings of a sort of rabies with which she had been infected from birth. At three years old she had begun a life-long chase after the Story.”
Perceptions, emotions and stories are balanced quite beautifully. And the adult writer let me in toallowed me to see into the heart and soul of The One She Knew The Best of All.
My heart was in my mouth when the child acquired a slice of parkin without her mother’s permission, and I completely understood the guilt that stopped her eating after a single bit.
I was bewildered with her when the mother of an admired baby played a joke, offering to make a present of the baby. I should have realised, but I had been completely caught up …
The latter part of the book loses just a little magic, as suddenly the adult writer seems to realise that she must put certain things into her book. The chapter about her mother is lovely but it doesn’t quite belong, and emigration to America offers much but there are so many facts to be explained that I couldn’t stay caught up as I had been.
But it was there was still much that was lovely. And my heart sang when the child, on the verge of adulthood, became the local storyteller, and then began to wonder if she might even become a writer.
“The people whose stories were bought and printed must sometime have sent their first stories. And they could not have known whether they were really good or not until they had asked and found out. The only was of finding out was to send one – written in a clear hand on one side of ordinary foolscap – having first made quite sure that it had stamps enough on it. If a person had the courage to do that, he or she would at least hear if it was worth reading - if a stamp was enclosed.”
Of course she might! Of course she did!
But the the story of the child, and this book, ends.
I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to return to childhood, to spend time in those wonderful gardens, to reach up to those shelves for another book to consume.
But leave I must.
I think you may understand my feelings if I quote a little from Warne’s Announcement list for October 1893 …
“Mrs Burnett’s story is unique in literature, being the frankly autobiographical narrative of a child up to girlhood, with its sensations and emotions as each new phase and problem of life opens to it.”
The volume I have is a later reproduction, a facsimile edition published by the same publisher, Frederick Warne & Co Ltd, in 1974. It is very lovely, and it matches my recollection of its author very nicely.
The author’s preface was a little stiff, but when I read the first words of the first chapter I was charmed, and I knew that I was in safe hands.
“I had every opportunity for knowing her well at least. We were born on the same day, we learned to toddle about together, we began our earliest observations of the world we lived in at the same period, we made the same mental remarks on people and things, and reserved to ourselves exactly the same rights of of private personal opinion.
I have not the remotest idea what she looked like. She belonged to an era when photography was not as advanced an art as it is to-day, and no picture of her was ever made. It is a well-authenticated fact that she was auburn-haired and rosy, and I can testify that she was curly, because one of my earliest recollections of her emotions is a memory of the momentarily maddening effect of a sharp, stinging jerk of the comb when the nurse was absent-minded or maladroit.”
The adult voice was there but it allowed the child, and the childish perceptions, to shine. I saw a hint of what made her into a writer, and a hint of the woman she would become.
The author’s decision to always refer to her younger self as ‘The One I Knew The Best of All’ bothered me a little at first, but it very soon felt entirely natural. Definitely a wise decision: I came to know the child and her world with the least possible distraction from the knowledge of who she grew up to be.
The story began quietly, in the nursery, with toys, a nursemaid, an occasional visitor. And slowly, as the first picture books arrived, it became more and more vibrant.
I had worried a little that family seemed absent, that the first mention of a father was when he died, but very quickly I realised that was not the case at all. the child was so secure in her home and her family that she didn’t need to mention them and she was free to explore her world.
She fell in love with her garden as soon as she set foot there …
“Was it always Spring or Summer in that enchanted Garden which, out of a whole world, has remained throughout a lifetime the Garden of Eden? Was the sun always shining? Later and more material experience of the English climate leads me to imagine that it was not always flooded and warmed with sunshine, and filled with the scent of roses and mignonette and new-mown hay and apple-blossoms and strawberries all together, and that one laid down on the grass on one’s back one could not always see that high, high world of deep blue with fleecy islets and mountains of snow drifting softly by or seeming to be quite still. That world to which somehow one seemed to belong even more than to the earth, and which drew one upward with such visions of running over the soft white hills and springing, from little island to little island, across the depths of blue which seemed a sea. But it was always so on the days the One I knew the best of all remembers the garden. This is in no doubt because, on the wet days and the windy ones, the cold days and the ugly ones, she was kept in the warm nursery and did not see the altered scene at all.”
She was fascinated by the world she saw, and utterly captivated by books that could take her in to whole other worlds …
“The Small Person used to look at them sometimes with hopeless, hungry eyes. It seemed so horribly wicked that there should be shelves of books – shelves full of them – which offered nothing to a starving creature. She was a starving creature in those days, with a positively wolfish appetite for books, though no one knew about it or understood the anguish of its gnawings. It must be plainly stated that her longings were not for “improving” books. The cultivation she gained in those days was gained quite unconsciously, through the workings of a sort of rabies with which she had been infected from birth. At three years old she had begun a life-long chase after the Story.”
Perceptions, emotions and stories are balanced quite beautifully. And the adult writer let me in toallowed me to see into the heart and soul of The One She Knew The Best of All.
My heart was in my mouth when the child acquired a slice of parkin without her mother’s permission, and I completely understood the guilt that stopped her eating after a single bit.
I was bewildered with her when the mother of an admired baby played a joke, offering to make a present of the baby. I should have realised, but I had been completely caught up …
The latter part of the book loses just a little magic, as suddenly the adult writer seems to realise that she must put certain things into her book. The chapter about her mother is lovely but it doesn’t quite belong, and emigration to America offers much but there are so many facts to be explained that I couldn’t stay caught up as I had been.
But it was there was still much that was lovely. And my heart sang when the child, on the verge of adulthood, became the local storyteller, and then began to wonder if she might even become a writer.
“The people whose stories were bought and printed must sometime have sent their first stories. And they could not have known whether they were really good or not until they had asked and found out. The only was of finding out was to send one – written in a clear hand on one side of ordinary foolscap – having first made quite sure that it had stamps enough on it. If a person had the courage to do that, he or she would at least hear if it was worth reading - if a stamp was enclosed.”
Of course she might! Of course she did!
But the the story of the child, and this book, ends.
I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to return to childhood, to spend time in those wonderful gardens, to reach up to those shelves for another book to consume.
But leave I must.
September 29, 2018
The library where I work in East Tennessee is publishing a new edition of this book and I am helping with proofreading. I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I read several of her books as a child but hadn’t known that her writing career began near where I live.
January 26, 2021
Frances Hodgeson Burnett is my absolute favorite author. I knew going into this that she was going to be a reflection of my childhood because I feel that connection with her for whatever reason...
And sure enough there are echoes of my childhood, scene to scene may I add, in this book. The whole story with the big books and their wonder that she fails to understand until some time is exactly something that happened to me.
You can see the seeds of some of her other books like the secret garden or a little princess within her in this book
The writing is absolutely gorgeous, especially at the end when she describes those fields, she's a real cottagecore at heart, and I just- just loved every word she wrote.. The way it flows, and I imagine myself in those mountains
Ahh what a beautiful life to live, though of course she had her hardships too no doubt, but still!!!
And sure enough there are echoes of my childhood, scene to scene may I add, in this book. The whole story with the big books and their wonder that she fails to understand until some time is exactly something that happened to me.
You can see the seeds of some of her other books like the secret garden or a little princess within her in this book
The writing is absolutely gorgeous, especially at the end when she describes those fields, she's a real cottagecore at heart, and I just- just loved every word she wrote.. The way it flows, and I imagine myself in those mountains
Ahh what a beautiful life to live, though of course she had her hardships too no doubt, but still!!!
May 14, 2021
"I wish I had something to read," she used to say often.
"Where is the book I saw you with yesterday?"
"I've finished it," she would answer, rather sheepishly...
There's something quite strange, and rather nice, in finding that the author, who grew up in the Victorian Era, had the same conversations about books as I did when I was young! She too was told not to read at the table...
In one way I am incredibly thankful that things have changed since this was written and that England's cities no longer have an 'ever-falling little rain of "smuts"' falling on people when they went outside, on the flowers in the park, and so on! You can really feel how wonderful it must have been to move to America and be surrounded by nature after growing up in that environment. This is where I am slightly sad, for now with most children growing up in urban areas they do not have the freedom and opportunity to grow up in such a beautiful environment as she did after her move.
She reminds me in many ways of Anne from Anne of Green Gables, her love of nature - beautiful descriptions of the landscape she lived in in America, personifying the trees near her house - and also her imagination, telling stories to her small group of friends and when she was a bit older sending off writing in the hope of being published.
There's also a scene describing an overgrown garden in the city, which I suspect is what inspired her to write The Secret Garden when she grew up!
And she was in Love - in Love with morning, noon, and night; with Spring and Summer and Winter; with leaves and roots and trees; with rain and dew and sun; with shadows and odours and winds; with all the little living things; with the rapture of being and unknowingness and mere Life - with the whole World.
"Where is the book I saw you with yesterday?"
"I've finished it," she would answer, rather sheepishly...
There's something quite strange, and rather nice, in finding that the author, who grew up in the Victorian Era, had the same conversations about books as I did when I was young! She too was told not to read at the table...
In one way I am incredibly thankful that things have changed since this was written and that England's cities no longer have an 'ever-falling little rain of "smuts"' falling on people when they went outside, on the flowers in the park, and so on! You can really feel how wonderful it must have been to move to America and be surrounded by nature after growing up in that environment. This is where I am slightly sad, for now with most children growing up in urban areas they do not have the freedom and opportunity to grow up in such a beautiful environment as she did after her move.
She reminds me in many ways of Anne from Anne of Green Gables, her love of nature - beautiful descriptions of the landscape she lived in in America, personifying the trees near her house - and also her imagination, telling stories to her small group of friends and when she was a bit older sending off writing in the hope of being published.
There's also a scene describing an overgrown garden in the city, which I suspect is what inspired her to write The Secret Garden when she grew up!
And she was in Love - in Love with morning, noon, and night; with Spring and Summer and Winter; with leaves and roots and trees; with rain and dew and sun; with shadows and odours and winds; with all the little living things; with the rapture of being and unknowingness and mere Life - with the whole World.
February 20, 2023
Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess and The Secret Garden wrote this autobiography of her childhood as told through herself as a child whom she referred to as the Small Person.
I became interested in this book knowing that she was British, but she, with her family, moved to Knoxville, Tennessee just after the end of the American Civil War.
I was intrigued to learn how that came about.
I became interested in this book knowing that she was British, but she, with her family, moved to Knoxville, Tennessee just after the end of the American Civil War.
I was intrigued to learn how that came about.
January 30, 2026
The edition I read I believe is one printed from a website as I cannot find the one with my cover anywhere. I really loved this book and it may well be one of my top reads of the year. I wasn't sure what it was when I started reading it but it seems it is the story of her childhood through her teenage years to when she started to be published. It is told from the point of view of "The Small Person."
For me, reading this, I saw a connection as to why she wrote The Secret Garden. I have always said The Secret Garden is about what it is and not what someone wants to read into it and this book seems to reveal that I am right because without giving anything away, both of these books involve a poorly little boy. As is written on page 147," one could imagine all sorts of beautifulness hidden by the walls too high to be looked over, the little green door which was never unclosed. It made her wish so that she could get inside." This is from Chapter 14, The Dryad Days. This is the chapter I enjoyed the most when she writes about the beautiful countryside in all the seasons with all the abundance of wild flowers and trees and how beautiful it is in the snow. This book has pathos as well as beautiful descriptions. It is certainly a book to keep.
For me, reading this, I saw a connection as to why she wrote The Secret Garden. I have always said The Secret Garden is about what it is and not what someone wants to read into it and this book seems to reveal that I am right because without giving anything away, both of these books involve a poorly little boy. As is written on page 147," one could imagine all sorts of beautifulness hidden by the walls too high to be looked over, the little green door which was never unclosed. It made her wish so that she could get inside." This is from Chapter 14, The Dryad Days. This is the chapter I enjoyed the most when she writes about the beautiful countryside in all the seasons with all the abundance of wild flowers and trees and how beautiful it is in the snow. This book has pathos as well as beautiful descriptions. It is certainly a book to keep.
April 7, 2025
First published in 1893, this memoir has some of the romanticism and hyperbole of writing in that time, but I still found myself identifying with the author in many ways. My favorite passage describes exactly how I felt as a young reader: ‘ She was a starving creature in those days with a positively wolfish appetite for books … she had begun a life-long chase after the Story.’ And as a writer: ‘her storytelling seemed part of herself— something she could not help doing.’ Even her cat, tucked up on her writing desk, sounds like my own: ‘It had a clearly defined character, and understood that it was assisting in literary efforts.’
I found this book humorous and endearing, and very authentic as it is told in the author’s own words.
I found this book humorous and endearing, and very authentic as it is told in the author’s own words.
January 1, 2018
I read this for research, but loved it. It is hopelessly saccharine and romantic, but there are anecdotes in it that are deeply symbolic of childhood. There is an authenticity to FHB's desire to capture her memories (she talks of her childhood self in the third person throughout as 'The Small Person').
May 17, 2021
I highly recommend Frances Hodgson Burnett’s memoir of her childhood in the early Victorian era. I loved it and I loved her! The Small Person (as Burnett calls her) is full of imagination and an insatiable hunger for Story, feels things deeply, is delightfully naïve, and loves nature — even in a soot covered, industrial city, where there is little nature to be found. A kindred spirit.
February 11, 2023
I love Frances Hodgson Burnett, so I wanted to love her memoir. It was good to get a glimpse of her nature-loving and observant childhood, but hard to ignore the blatant classism, sexism, and racism of her time. Still, a worthy read.
November 26, 2016
Did not finish. The whole idea of writing about yourself as another person seems entirely stilted.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews