The Secret Garden is a classic - as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Yet when Frances Hodgson Burnett began writing the story in the spring of 1909, she was building a new home in Plandome, Long Island!

Although born in England, Frances Hodgson emigrated with her family to Tennessee in 1865 after her father’s death. They lived at first in a log cabin, where sixteen-year-old Frances tried to set up a school. But times were very hard. She had always loved writing, and realised she might be able to earn money that way. Soon she was selling romantic stories to magazines, and after her mother died in 1870, Frances was able to provide for herself and her two sisters through her writing.

In time she became an acclaimed novelist, and after marrying Dr Swan Burnett, they moved to Washington. But it wasn’t until she started writing for children that Frances found her greatest and most enduring fame.

Her first children’s book - inspired by her own son Vivian - was Little Lord Fauntleroy. It was an immediate success, becoming an even greater hit when dramatised for the stage. The play started the fashion for “Fauntleroy suits” (black velvet with lace collars) which were all the rage at the turn of the century.

By the time she wrote The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett was a naturalised American citizen, although she continued to visit England whenever she could. Indeed, in those far-off days before air travel, she made the long sea crossing of the Atlantic no less than thirty-three times!

As was common in those days, The Secret Garden first appeared as a serial (in ‘The American Magazine’) before being published in book form. And over the years, it has proved by far her most enduringly popular story. It has been filmed several times, and has also been seen as a ballet, a TV series and even a Broadway musical.

Among her last words, Frances wrote: “As long as you have a garden you have a future, and as long as you have a future you are alive.”