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Secret Garden

frances hodgson burnett wanda mccaddon

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Newly orphaned, little Mary Lennox is sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with an uncle. Sickly, spoiled, and selfish, Mary is ignored by her uncle, just as she was ignored by her busy parents. Her gloomy new home, full of locked doors and mysterious cries, holds few charms for Mary until one day she discovers an arched doorway that leads to an overgrown garden. As Mary, with the help of a kindly local boy, Dickon, tends the neglected garden, it begins to come alive — and so, too, does she. The discovery of the secret garden leads to another that of her invalid cousin Colin, shut away in one of the manor’s locked wings. Colin is every bit as nasty and self-centered as Mary was. Can the garden help Colin thrive as well? Beautifully written, this powerful, moving tale of friendship, renewal, and the healing power of nature remains a perennial favorite of both children and adults.

0 pages, Audio CD

First published August 1,1911
Literary awards
lewis carroll shelf award, 
Places
yorkshire england, england, united kingdom, 

This edition

Format
0 pages, Audio CD
Published
March 6, 2006 by BBC Audiobooks America
ISBN
9781572705227
ASIN
1572705221
Language
English
Characters More characters

More editions

About the author

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frances hodgson burnett

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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.

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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99 reviews All reviews
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almightycapone
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Jak teleport do dzieciństwa. Nadal piękna i wspaniale opisująca przemianę głównej bohaterki. Czytając ją współcześnie oczywiście rzucają się w oczy ksenofobiczne czy mające korzenie w epoce kolonializmu wypowiedzi bohaterów, które w okresie dzieciństwa nie były przeze mnie zauważane, ale to nadal piękna literatura, do której warto wrócić choćby z sentymentu dla książek dzieciństwa.
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Kundi-Man
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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4 ⭐

Un classico che ti coccola!
Ho un rapporto molto contrastante con i classici quindi, a mio malgrado, ne leggo pochissimi ma questo mi ha conquistata dalla prima pagina.
La scrittura molto semplice e senza fronzoli e la storia commovente sono i punti forti di questo classico per bambini.
Il libro parla di rinascita e resilienza il tutto accompagnato da un'atmosfera magica e fatata, in cui il punto di vista dei bambini è il cardine intorno a cui ruotano gli eventi.
Nel complesso ho molto apprezzato questo romanzo e, anche se ha dei toni molto infantili, racconta i vari temi in modo adeguato.
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KSeca
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Having read The Secret Garden as a child I really wanted to read this book as an adult to see would I still feel the magic of the story many years on. Well I felt the magic just as I did many years ago.

This is a beautiful book and so well written, it has everything a story needs to fuel the imagination of a child, a big rambling house set on the moors, a secret garden, a couple of spoilt children and a big family who value life and friendships and put others needs before theirs.

I escaped in this book and although I knew the story and the outcome I loved every page as the writing is so descriptive and the characters so well drawn that this book comes alive. I have seen the film several times of the secret garden and yet reading the book the characters and places took on a completely different image which was great as Frances Hodgson Burnett really knew how to capture her readers.

So glad I picked this book to read again, as a good story, well written never grows old.
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jwheeties
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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This was one of my favorite books from childhood, and I decided to re-read it this spring after revisiting another beloved FHB work, "A Little Princess."

Like so many famous children's books, the story doesn't really get going until a child is left alone without parents. The surprising heroine of "Secret Garden" is the unlikeable Mary Lennox, who had lived in India with her rich parents until they both died of cholera, and then she was sent to live with a wealthy-and-distracted uncle in Yorkshire, England. At her uncle's manor she discovers a love for gardens, and she becomes obsessed with a mysterious story about a secret garden on the property that no one has been in for 10 years, which is when her aunt died in an accident. There are also strange noises in the house at night, and Mary becomes determined to find out the source of those odd cries.

I was a fan of the musical version of "Secret Garden" that had a good stage run back in the 1990s, and during this re-read I was struck by how the show had improved on some of the story points in the book, giving them more color and detail.

I still have my childhood copy of "Secret Garden," even though its spine is broken and there are loose pages everywhere. I'll never throw it away, and I'll probably continue to re-read it every few years when I need a quick dose of a comforting story. Oh, the power of a beloved book from childhood!

Favorite Passages
"At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one."

"Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it. Just as it had given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her blood, so the same things had stirred her mind. In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things. Already she felt less contrary, though she did not know why."


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TungstenOre
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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La ricerca del proprio giardino

"Uno degli aspetti più strani della vita è che solo di tanto in tanto siamo sicuri di vivere a lungo, molto a lungo, forse per sempre."

La vita è troppo breve per serbare rancori, arrendersi, costruire dei muri intorno a sé.
"Il giardino segreto" è l'emozionante resurrezione di due personaggi, ognuno dei due colpevole per colpe altrui ed entrambi silenziosamente desiderosi di amicizia e amore, sentimenti per lungo tempo negati.
Viviamo in una società ove facciamo coincidere il nostro benessere con elementi sempre più sopra le righe ed elaborati, quando in verità è proprio nelle piccole cose che possiamo ritrovare noi stessi.
L'esaltazione della vita sgorga con naturalezza dalle parole della Burnett, la quale ci ricorda che il miglioramento del mondo parte sempre con una rinascita interiore, con l'accettazione del nostro giardino segreto.
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TatuSenhor
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a classic novel about healing, power of friend and nature. Mary Lennox is a young girl who was sent to live with her uncles family in Yorkshire after her parent’s death. She meets her sickly cousin by accident when she is exploring the estate looking for the source of crying. Angry, sad and withdrawn, Mary discovers a hidden garden. Colin, May and a boy Dickon work hard to bring life back to the garden. The healing properties of nature start to make Mary feel better and Colin to gain strength.

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Cicada7
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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“She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.”

Our book club choice for April was ‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

As a child, I enjoyed Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess as well as this classic story, all in abridged format, but it was so wonderful to revisit this one (in its original form) as an adult. While this story is simple enough for children to understand, it’s still relatable enough for adults to garner valuable lessons.

Our host, Melissa Gilbert, wanted her 2024 book choices to focus on “grief and fear turned on their heads by hope and magic.” Like our first book, LHITBW, this book was also written by a woman in her 60s and is a great reminder that it’s never too late to chase dreams and share stories. I loved FHB’s nod to mindfulness in the following quote:

“Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”

I was amazed at the transformation of a lonely and spoiled little girl who discovers a hidden garden and befriends a local boy and her sickly cousin. In inviting readers to cultivate their own transformation, Burnett also highlighted:

✔️the restorative power of nature and friendship
✔️the importance of environment and attitude in our healing journey
✔️the benefit of finding joy and purpose in caring for something outside of ourselves

I was reminded that although we may feel locked up, over-grown and abandoned, if we dig in, make room, prune, water, weed and feed our soul with life-tending magic….anything can happen!

I cried when she was gifted the skipping rope and smiled at the alternative name for daffodils, ‘Daffydowndillys.’ I loved the focus on intergenerational and inter-social class friendships.

This book about healing, rebirth and second chances is one I’m glad I read as an adult!

*the book club meeting was made even more special by a guest who shared from her heart- the great-great-granddaughter of the author!
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sakis263
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Ο Μυστικός κήπος είναι ένα όμορφο παραμύθι, αλλά και πολλά περισσότερα από αυτό. Είναι μια αλληγορική ιστορία που μιλάει για την ψυχή, που όταν της δίνεις ήλιο, νερό, την αγαπάς, ανθίζει σαν τις τριανταφυλλιές του μυστικού κήπου. Τι μπορεί να θέλει ο άνθρωπος περισσότερο από αγάπη;
Μια ιστορία που πρέπει να είναι μέσα στα πρώτα 5 βιβλία που δίνουμε στα παιδιά μας να διαβάσουν.
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