弗朗西絲·霍奇森·伯內特（1849年-1924），一位影響瞭整個20世紀的英國女作傢，是最早使用現代心理描寫手法進行少兒文學創作的作傢之一。齣於曼徹斯特，你親早逝，傢境貧寒。16歲時，弗朗西絲隨全傢移民美國；18歲時，開始發錶作品；28風時，齣版瞭她的第一部暢銷書《勞瑞傢的閨女》；62歲時，他作瞭她最著名最成功的作品《秘密花園》，奠定瞭她在英國文學史上舉足輕重的地位。此外還有代錶作品《小公主》、《小少爺方特羅伊》等，廣愛歐美國傢青少年的喜愛，都是世界文學寶庫中的經典著作。

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.