A Little Princess moves adroitly between “fantasy” and “reality,” playing with the categories until the reader is pleasantly unsure which is which. It is this toying at the edge that makes the story so appealing to children because it encourages them to believe that their own ordinary lives could be filled with “magic.”

Looking out of her dreary attic at the hostile setting of gothic London, Sara Crewe uses her imagination to create a secret world. The children at the seminary repeatedly manage to keep delightful, magical secrets from the domineering adults who try to rob them of their freedom and autonomy.

Burnett was born Frances Hodgson in 1849 in Manchester, England. In her early years her family lived a comfortable life in the suburbs. Like the character Sara in A Little Princess, the young Frances Hodgson experienced a drastic change in fortune after the death of her father. After more than a decade of poverty in England, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in New Market, Tennessee. There she married Dr. Swan Moses Burnett in 1873, and in the following years gave birth to two sons. While her husband went to medical school, Burnett wrote to support her family. In 1885, she wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy, basing the title character on the personality of her younger son, Vivian. The extensive sales of the book changed Burnett’s fortune once again, and she went on to write the critically acclaimed A Little Princess and The Secret Garden.