Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

At the turn of the 20th century, Mary Lennox is a sickly and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her. She is cared for by servants, who allow her to become a spoiled, aggressive and selfish child. After a cholera epidemic kills her parents and the servants, Mary is discovered alive but alone in the empty house. She briefly lives with an English clergyman and his family before she is sent to Yorkshire, in England, to live with Archibald Craven, an uncle whom she has never met, at his isolated house, Misselthwaite Manor. At first, Mary is as rude and sour as ever. She dislikes her new home, the people living in it, and most of all, the bleak moor on which it sits.