Surly Tim, and Seth

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) was an English- American playwright and author. She was best known for her children's stories, in particular The Secret Garden (1911) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886). Her first story was published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1868. Her main writing talent was combining realistic detail of workingclass life with a romantic plot. Her first novel was published in 1877; That Lass o' Lowrie's was a story of Lancashire life. After moving to Washington, D.C., Burnett wrote the novels Haworth's (1879), Louisiana (1880), A Fair Barbarian (1881), and Through One Administration (1883), as well as a play, Esmeralda (1881), written with William Gillette. Her later works include Sara Crewe, or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's (1888) - later rewritten as A Little Princess (1905); and A Lady of Quality (1896) - considered one of the best of her plays. The Lost Prince was published in 1915, and The Head of the House of Coombe was published in Canada in 1922. During World War I, Burnett put her beliefs about what happens after death into writing with her novella The White People (1917).

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1877

About the author

Frances 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.

Reviews

[Wealhtheow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Soppy short stories about the pure love laborers feel for their masters. Creepily classist. Told in dialect. Not worth reading.

[Glenn Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm only writing a review for "Surly Tim" - 4.5 - I only knew that Frances Hodgson Burnett had written children's stories, but here is a very sad tale more suited for adults. The writing was at times hard to follow because it was written to show the characters uneducated accent, but this suited the story very well.