弗朗西丝·霍奇森·伯内特（1849年-1924），一位影响了整个20世纪的英国女作家，是最早使用现代心理描写手法进行少儿文学创作的作家之一。出于曼彻斯特，你亲早逝，家境贫寒。16岁时，弗朗西丝随全家移民美国；18岁时，开始发表作品；28风时，出版了她的第一部畅销书《劳瑞家的闺女》；62岁时，他作了她最著名最成功的作品《秘密花园》，奠定了她在英国文学史上举足轻重的地位。此外还有代表作品《小公主》、《小少爷方特罗伊》等，广爱欧美国家青少年的喜爱，都是世界文学宝库中的经典著作。

The Secret Garden , by Frances Hodgson Burnett , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics :

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Though Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote more than forty books, none remains so popular as her miraculous and magical masterpiece, The Secret Garden . Has any story ever dared to begin by calling its heroine, the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen” and, just a few sentences later, as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived?” Mary Lennox is the little pig,” sent to Misselthwaite Manor, on the Yorkshire moors, to live with her uncle after her parents die of cholera. There she discovers her sickly cousin Colin, who is equally obnoxious and imperious. Both love no one because they have never been loved. They are the book’s spiritual secret gardens, needing only the right kind of care to bloom into lovely children.

Mary also discovers a literal secret garden, hidden behind a locked gate on her uncle’s estate, neglected for the ten years since Colin’s birth and his mother’s death. Together with a local child named Dickon, Mary and Colin transform the garden into a paradise bursting with life and color. Through their newfound mutual love of nature, they nurture each other, until they are brought back to health and happiness.

With Charles Robinson's original illustrations. Jill Muller was born in England and educated at Mercy College and Columbia University. She currently teaches at Mercy College and Columbia University. She is the author of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Victorian Catholicism , in addition to articles on Joyce, Newman, Hopkins, and the medieval women mystics.