Frances Hodgson Burnett

A LITTLE PRINCESS by Frances Hodgson Burnett Annotated Edition

A Little Princess begins with seven-year-old Sara Crewe's journey from India, where she has been raised by her father, to London, where she is to attend boarding school. Before bidding her farewell, her doting father gives her extravagant gifts including custom-made clothes and a beautiful doll, which she names Emily. The father and daughter say an emotional farewell before Captain Crewe returns to India. Sara desperately misses her father, but survives on the strength of her friendliness and active imagination. She tells exciting stories, which make her popular among her classmates, and she enjoys pretending that her doll, Emily, is capable of thinking and understanding her. Sara's new friends in this period include Ermengarde, a well-intentioned but rather dull classmate who looks up to her, and Lottie, the school's youngest student, who accepts Sara as a kind of surrogate mother.