The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)
“A sour, neglected child finds a locked garden — and in tending it back to life, discovers she can do the same for herself.”
At a Glance
Ten-year-old Mary Lennox is sent from colonial India to her uncle's bleak Yorkshire estate after her parents die in a cholera outbreak. Lonely and contrary, she discovers a walled garden that has been locked for ten years. As she nurtures the garden back to life, she also uncovers her sickly cousin Colin, who has been convinced he is dying. Together with a Yorkshire farm boy named Dickon, the three children work the garden in secret — and the garden works on them in return, healing Colin's hypochondria, softening Mary's selfishness, and drawing the estate's absent master, Archibald Craven, back from his grief.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Published in 1911, The Secret Garden was initially reviewed as charming but minor. By mid-century it had become a foundational text of children's literature, cited by C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, and countless others as formative. It is now recognized as one of the earliest psychological novels for children — its concern with the way environment and mental attitude shape health and character anticipates the child psychology of the twentieth century.
Diction Profile
Accessible and warm in narration, with periodic elevation to spiritual-mystical register for garden and Magic sequences
Moderate