The Secret Garden

About this book

First published 1911 · Serialised in 1910 · Never out of print

Frances Hodgson Burnett rented Great Maytham Hall in Kent from 1898 to 1907, and in its grounds she found a walled garden that had been left to grow wild. She cleared it, filled it with roses, and did much of her writing at a table inside it. A robin there became a friend of hers, and became a character too: in the book, it is a robin that shows the way to the hidden door. Burnett moved the story north to the Yorkshire moors, but the walled garden in it began as this real one in Kent.

It ran first as a magazine serial in 1910, then came out as a book in 1911. It was not her greatest success at the time; she was already famous for Little Lord Fauntleroy. But its standing grew through the century that followed, and it is now the book she is most remembered for, adapted many times for stage and screen.

The copy on this shelf is the full original text.

Chapters

A long one: read it a chapter a night.

1. Chapter I. There Is No One Left
2. Chapter II. Mistress Mary Quite Contrary
3. Chapter III. Across the Moor
4. Chapter IV. Martha
5. Chapter V the Cry in the Corridor
6. Chapter VI. “There Was Someone Crying—there Was!”
7. Chapter VII. the Key to the Garden
8. Chapter VIII. the Robin Who Showed the Way
9. Chapter IX. the Strangest House Anyone Ever Lived In
10. Chapter X. Dickon
11. Chapter XI. the Nest of the Missel Thrush
12. Chapter XII. “Might I Have a Bit of Earth?”
13. Chapter XIII. “I Am Colin”
14. Chapter XIV. a Young Rajah
15. Chapter XV. Nest Building
16. Chapter XVI. “I Won’t!” Said Mary
17. Chapter XVII. a Tantrum
18. Chapter XVIII. “Tha’ Munnot Waste No Time”
19. Chapter XIX. “It Has Come!”
20. Chapter XX. “I Shall Live Forever—and Ever—and Ever!”
21. Chapter XXI. Ben Weatherstaff
22. Chapter XXII. When the Sun Went Down
23. Chapter XXIII. Magic
24. Chapter XXIV. “Let Them Laugh”
25. Chapter XXV. the Curtain
26. Chapter XXVI. “It’s Mother!”
27. Chapter XXVII. in the Garden

More to read aloud