About the Authors

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Manchester, England, in 1849 but migrated to Knoxville, Tenn., after the death of her father in 1865.  Following the death of her mother two years later, the 18-year-old Frances found herself the head of a family of four younger siblings.  She turned to writing to support them and saw her first story published in 1868.  Soon after, her work appeared regularly in such magazines as Scribner's Monthly and Harper's Bazaar.  Her popularity can be attributed to the way in which she combined realistic details of working-class life with romantic plots.  Her first novel, That Lass o' Lowrie's, a story of life in Lancashire, England, was published in 1877.  After moving with her husband Dr. Swan Burnett to Washington, D.C., she 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.

In 1886, she published the novel Little Lord Fauntleroy. Though originally intended for children, it found a significant audience in mothers.  It also created the popular fashion of long curls (based on her son Vivian's) and velvet suits with lace collars (based on the attire of Oscar Wilde).  The book sold more than half a million copies. And in 1888, she won a lawsuit in England over its dramatic rights, establishing a precedent that was later incorporated into British copyright law.

Burnett secured a divorce from her husband in 1898 but remarried two years later, this time to Stephen Townsend, her business manager. This second marriage would last less than two years, ending in 1902.

Her later works include Sara Crewe (1888) -- later rewritten as A Little Princess (1905); The Lady of Quality (1896) -- considered one of the best of her plays; and The Secret Garden (1909), the children's novel for which she is probably best known today.  A later work, The Lost Prince, was published in 1915.

From the mid-1890s, Burnett lived mainly in England, but in 1909 she moved back to the U.S., after having become a citizen in 1905.  After the death of her first son Lionel from consumption in 1890, she delved into spiritualism to assuage her grief.  She also dabbled in Theosophy for a time, and worked some of its concepts into The Secret Garden, in which the crippled boy Colin believes he can heal himself through positive thinking and affirmations.  During World War I, she put her beliefs about what happens after death into writing with her novella The White People.

Burnett died in Plandome, NY, in 1924, and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery nearby, next to her son Vivian.  A statue of her son Lionel stands at their feet.

Lucy Simon (b. 1943) is the daughter of Richard L. Simon, co-founder of the publishing house Simon & Schuster.  She started her music career at the age of 16, performing with her equally well-known sister, Carly Simon.  She recorded two albums with Carly and received a Grammy award for her children’s album “The Simon Sisters Sing the Lobster Quadrille and Other Songs for Children.”  As Lucy moved on from folk singing, she became drawn to musical theatre.  She grew up listening to opera and show tunes and started working on a musical version of the Laura Ingalls Wilder novel A Little House on the Prairie.  However, she put it aside to work on an adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett children’s classic The Secret Garden, in collaboration with book writer Marsha Norman.  For this effort she received a Tony award nomination for Best Original Score and a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music.  She also contributed songs for the off-Broadway musical A…My Name is Alice and recently composed the score for a new musical, Zhivago, based on Boris Pasternak’s epic novel Dr Zhivago, which premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2006.