The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a children's novel first published in 1911. When orphaned Mary Lennox arrives at her uncle's gloomy Yorkshire manor, she discovers a locked garden that has been abandoned for ten years. As Mary explores this hidden world, she uncovers family secrets and finds an unexpected companion—her bedridden cousin Colin. Together with a nature-loving boy named Dickon, the children nurture the forgotten garden back to life, transforming themselves in the process. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

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THE SECRET GARDEN

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

_Author of

“The Shuttle,” “The Making of a Marchioness,” “The Methods of Lady Walderhurst,” “The Lass o’ Lowries,” “Through One Administration,” “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” “A Lady of Quality,” etc._

Contents

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

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About This Edition

This edition of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 80,518 words — about 403 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

On Libreya, the text has been carefully formatted for comfortable reading on any screen — with consistent chapter navigation, adjustable font sizes, and four reading themes: light, sepia, dark, and night mode. Your reading position is saved automatically when you sign in, so you can pick up exactly where you left off across any device. The original text has not been altered in any way; what you read here is the same work as it appeared in its original published form.

About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.