Cultivating Secret Gardens

The Secret Garden participates in a rich tradition of imaginary places in children’s literature: Neverland, the Hundred Acre Wood, Mowgli’s jungle, the Land of Oz. In these places, children (or childlike creatures such as Kenneth Grahame’s Mole and Rat) must create their own paths through mysterious natural and supernatural landscapes. Nature can be challenging and dangerous, like the cyclone that blows Dorothy to Oz. But it is always a transformative, sacred space, like Mary Lennox’s secret garden. Robert Louis Stevenson’s title, A Child’s Garden of Verses, suggests that poetry cultivates a child’s imagination – or perhaps that the child’s imagination is itself a garden to cultivate with literature. Whether real, like Jo March’s apple orchard, or a metaphorical place to grow the spirit, these secret, imaginary enclosures of the natural world create special spaces for children to grow.

1. A.A. Milne. “When We Were Very Young.” Punch 166 (13 February 1924): 157.
2. J. M. Barrie. Peter and Wendy. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1911. Val 826 B27 U61 or Sine Illus B444pe
3. Robert Lewis Stevenson. A Child’s Garden of Verses. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885. Rare Book PR5489 .C5 1885
4. L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Chicago: Geo. M. Hill Co., 1900. Rare Book PS3503.A923 W59 1900
5. Rudyard Kipling. The Jungle Book. London: Macmillan and Co., 1894. Val 826 K62 S21
6. Rudyard Kipling. The Second Jungle Book. London: Macmillan and Co., 1895. Val PR4854 .J83
7. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women, or, Jo, Beth and Amy. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1868. 1926 Coll A39
8. Kenneth Grahame. The Wind in the Willows. London: Methuen and Co., 1908. Val 826 G766 Y711
9. Kenneth Grahame. The Wind in the Willows. Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933. Sine Illus S44wind

Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote The Secret Garden while planning the garden at her new estate at Plandome, Long Island in New York. The story, which a friend of Burnett’s referred to as “a sort of childrens [sic] Jane Eyre,” follows a few months in the life of ten-year-old Mary Lennox, orphaned by a cholera epidemic in India and sent to a mysterious manor on the Yorkshire moors. With help from new friends, Mary cultivates the house’s secret garden, and in doing so restores her emotional and physical health and that of her uncle and his son.

After serializing her story in the American Magazine, Burnett published The Secret Garden in simultaneous British and American editions in 1911. The novel was well received when it was first published, but did not attain the status of a children’s classic until several decades later. The 1949 film featuring child star Margaret O’Brien as Mary Lennox, and new editions in the 1950s, including one illustrated by Winnie-the-Pooh artist Ernest Shepard, popularized the book for new readers. There have been hundreds of print editions, and many adaptations for film, television, and theater, each bringing new audiences to Burnett’s classic story of the restorative power of nature.

1. Frances Hodgson Burnett. The Secret Garden. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1911. Rare Book PS1214 .S42 1911
2. Frances Hodgson Burnett. The Secret Garden. London: William Heinemann, 1911. Rare Book PS1214 .S42 1911b
3. Frances Hodgson Burnett. The Secret Garden. Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard. London: Heinemann, 1950. Sine Illus S44sec
4. Frances Hodgson Burnett. The Secret Garden. Illustrated by Graham Rust. Boston: David Godine, 1987. Presses G555bur
5. Robert Ardey. Screenplay for The Secret Garden. Culver City, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, 1948. Scripts 1731
6. Opening night playbill for The Secret Garden. St. James Theatre, New York, 25 April 1991.