Some other Frances Hodgson Burnett books (with illustrations)
/I remember Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911) and A Little Princess (1905) from my childhood. She wrote many more books over the course of a relatively long writing career….doing well enough to support her family, travel, and own several homes. Several books that she wrote around the same time as those books are available from Internet Archive and I browsed them recently.
Racketty-Packetty House (1906)
None of these three are as enduring as the The Secret Garden – but they are examples of what books for children were like during that period. I found myself wondering if any of my grandparents – would have seen these books. I don’t think they would have; the families were farmers and barely making enough to keep families housed, clothed and fed. The schools were small schools and 3 of my grandparents went to work as soon as they were able…knowing basic reading and arithmetic required to continue into adulthood and beyond. The one grandparent that did graduate from high school managed it by living with another family in a small town for the last years of her education. It is likely that about the only books in the houses were Bibles; the schools might have provided books but probably not books like these.
Did only children of relatively wealthy, educated parents that lived in cities have books like these?
