Frances Hodgson Burnett

Although best known for Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett was considered one of the leading writers in America on the strength of her adult novels, which made her name in the 1870s and 1880s. Ripe for rediscovery, Bello is proud to bring a select group of these classic novels back into print. The Head of the House of Coombe is the first of two volumes which were first serialised in 1920 in Scribner's Monthly, before being published in 1922. Together with the second volume, Robin, the 'House of Coombe' novels comprise Frances Hodgson Burnett's last substantial work. Returning to a theme that occurs again and again in her books - that of the change from riches to poverty - The Head of the House of Coombe contains Burnett's most dramatic manifestation of this idea, along with a potent sense of the old order breaking up in the years prior to the First World War.

Although best known for Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett was considered one of the leading writers in America on the strength of her adult novels, which made her name in the 1870s and 1880s. Ripe for rediscovery, Bello is proud to bring a select group of these classic novels back into print. First published in 1896, A Lady of Quality may have had its beginning "in a dark back chamber, revealed at the end of one of the corridors by the chance scratching of a match" in Portland Place, where Frances Hodgson Burnett was living. The house had a large basement area with long underground passages leading out to the Mews behind, about which Burnett is said to have remarked, "What a place to hide the body of a man you had accidentally killed." Thought of as a departure from her previous work, and set in the early Eighteenth Century, the body in question turns out to be that of Sir John Oxon, killed with riding whip by the book's heroine, Clorinda Wildairs: "Uncivilised and almost savage as her girlish life was, and unregulated by any outward training as was her mind, there were none who came in contact with her who could be blind to a certain strong, clear wit, and unconquerableness of purpose, for which she was remarkable. She ever knew full well what she desired to gain or to avoid, and once having fixed her mind upon any object, she showed an adroitness and brilliancy of resource, a control of herself and others, the which there was no circumventing. She never made a blunder because she could not control the expression of her emotions; and when she gave way to a passion, 'twas because she chose to do so, having naught to lose ..." A Lady of Quality is a novel about the invincibility of the human spirit, the refusal of a woman to be mild and submissive, the acceptance of all experience, and courage born of adversity.

Although best known for Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett was considered one of the leading writers in America on the strength of her adult novels, which made her name in the 1870s and 1880s. Ripe for rediscovery, Bello is proud to bring a select group of these classic novels back into print. That Lass O' Lowrie's was Frances Hodgson Burnett's first novel. A tale of Lancashire, her chosen heroine is pit-girl. Burnett uses the novel to explore questions of social inequality and injustice, with much of the material drawn from real life. Serialised in Scribner's Monthly before publication as a book, and first published in April 1877, That Lass O' Lowrie's won unanimous praise from the critics.

Although best known for Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett was considered one of the leading writers in America on the strength of her adult novels, which made her name in the 1870s and 1880s. Ripe for rediscovery, Bello is proud to bring a select group of these classic novels back into print. A complex tale of courtship, marriage, women's rights and American politics, Through One Administration is one of Frances Hodgson Burnett's most fascinating novels. At its centre is Bertha Amory, a society wife in nineteenth century Washington D. C. Married to a lawyer, her safe world is disrupted when a former acquaintance returns to the city. Philip Tredennis first met Bertha years earlier, when they were both young. Returning to find her married to another man, yet obviously not in love with him, Tredennis can only watch and try to do what he can for Bertha and the situation in which she finds herself. Frances Hodgson Burnett lived in Washington D. C. for many years and brilliantly recreates the world she knew so well, where even the most seemingly superficial of characters may show unexpected depth when observed in the right way.