Frances Hodgson Burnett

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) was an English-American novelist and playwright. Her family emigrated from Manchester to Tennessee after her father's death and into real poverty, and she began selling stories at eighteen to keep them — she paid for the postage by picking wild grapes. She wrote more than fifty books and a dozen plays, moved between England and America all her life, and fought an early transatlantic copyright case over the stage rights to Little Lord Fauntleroy that changed British law. She was a devoted gardener, which is the book of hers people still read: The Secret Garden.