The Secret Garden - Illustrated by Charles Robinson

Zusatztext “It is only the exceptional author who can write a book about children with sufficient skill! charm! simplicity! and significance to make it acceptable to both young and old. Mrs. Burnett is one of the few thus gifted.”— The New York Times Informationen zum Autor Frances Hodgson Burnett; Illustrated by Charles Robinson Klappentext Frances Hodgson Burnett's celebration of the kingdom of earth takes place in a secret garden, where the orphaned Mary Lennox and the invalid boy, Colin, are magically restored to health and well-being by Nature's mysterious living force. The original illustrations, by Charles Robinson, are perfect visual companions to the rich and illuminating text. CHAPTER I There Is No One Left When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to read and write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all. One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she became crosser still when she saw that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah. “Why did you come?” she said to the strange woman. “I will not let you stay. Send my Ayah to me.” The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could not come and when Mary threw herself into a passion and beat and kicked her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not possible for the Ayah to come to Missie Sahib. There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done in its regular order and several of the native servants seemed missing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared faces. But no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come. She was actually left alone as the morning went on, and at last she wandered out into the garden and began to play by herself under a tree near the veranda. She pretended that she was making a flower-bed, and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth, all the time growing more and more angry and muttering to herself the things she would say and the names she would call Saidie when she returned. “Pig! Pig! Daughter of Pigs!” she said, because to call a native a pig is the worst insult of all. She was grinding her teeth and saying this over and over again when she heard her mother come out on the veranda...

Über den Autor / die Autorin

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) was born and grew up in Manchester, but her father died when she was three and in 1865 she emigrated with her mother to Knoxville, Tennessee, where her uncle had already opened a grocery store. Five years later her mother died and – like many other women of her time – she began writing short stories for popular magazines to support her family. Her first novel, That Lass o' Lowrie's (1877), brought her instant fame on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1873 she had married Swan Burnett, a physician, and it was for the two sons of the marriage that she wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy, which was first serialized in the children's monthly magazine St. Nicholas. When published in book form in October 1886, it went immediately on to the bestseller lists alongside Tolstoy's War and Peace and Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines. Mrs. Burnett wrote many other novels, for both children and adults, as well as plays and short stories, but she is best remembered for The Secret Garden (1911) and A Little Princess (1905).

Her marriage to Dr. Burnett ended in divorce in 1898 and two years later she remarried – but, again, the marriage ended, this time in separation. She became an American citizen in 1905, though she travelled frequently to Europe. She died at her home on Long Island a few weeks before her seventy-fifth birthday.

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles Robinson
• Mitarbeit: Charles Robinson (Illustration)
• Verlag: Everyman s Library PRH USA
• Sprache: Englisch
• Altersempfehlung: 8 bis 12 Jahre
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erschienen: 11.05.1993
• EAN: 9780679423096
• ISBN: 978-0-679-42309-6
• Seiten: 336
• Abmessung: 163 mm x 211 mm x 25 mm
• Serien: Everyman's Library Children's; Everyman's Library Children's Classics Series; Everyman's Library Children's Classics Series; Everyman's Library Children's
• Thema: Kinder- und Jugendbücher > Sachbücher / Sachbilderbücher > Mensch