The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) takes place in what country?

Starts in India, but most of the book is set in Yorkshire, England.

I voted England.

I love that book! :-)

I've never read it. I was a voracious reader as a child, but I guess no one ever suggested it. I feel somewhat deprived and should probably just go ahead and read it now.

Anyway, I voted England.

There have been two movies made about it as well as the book ...I loved them both ...in fact I call my special garden ( hidden garden out the back of my home in a farming district ...my secret garden because of that story ...everyone should have a little space set aside for their very own secret garden.

Though my vote goes for China, I know it is an English book. I once saw it on the bookshelf in a bookstore. But to tell the truth, I have not read it. Thanks for your reminding, next time when I come across the book, I will have a good read. Anyone here can do a favor to have a brief introduction of the book?

A little English girl (spoiled but lonely) lives in India with her parents ...after a terrible earthquake she is orhaned and sent to live with her Uncle in law in England ...(he has lost his beloved wife ...the girl's mother's twin sister) in an accident in the garden where she fell from a swing while heavily pregnant. The baby was saved but rejected by a heartbroken father who spends as much time as possible away from the mansion and the son he hardly sees. The manipulating Housekeeper convinces the father and servants ...and the child himself that he is very ill and will have a short life. After arriving in England the little girl sets about secretly
restoring the garden so beloved by her Aunt ...a secret garden that has been locked up ever since the Aunt's death. She takes her sickly cousin out to see the place his mother loved so much and this magical place helps her to help him get well and walk again. The father arrives home to find the son in good health and the garden restored ...much to the housekeeper's great discomfort as she has treated the young girl badly and in effect kept the young boy in bed for most of his life. You will have to read the book and watch the garden come to life in the movies ...the story is of how a garden can melt and mend the human heart.
chrissy

First book I remember receiving as a gift as a child. Still have it. My kids loved it as well.

I posted this just a minute ago but the monster in cyber space must have eaten it...

This book sounds like a good read, I'll have to check it out.

I kind of cheated on my vote. My maiden name is Hodgdon...when my English (and Irish) ancestors came to the States it was spelled Hodgson.

I love this book! Here's my synopsis, Jianhua:

First published in 1911, The Secret Garden is the story of Mary Lennox, a bitter and selfish little girl who hates the world and everyone in it. After she is orphaned by a cholera epidemic in India, she is sent to live with an estranged uncle on his sprawlingly creepy English country estate. When she first arrives, she is pale and thin and sporting a personality that would smell like sour milk if it could. She detests the outdoors. With a little help from her maid and a boy named Dickon, Mary gradually develops the pleasant demeanor of a normal girl. So paradoxically, India made Mary pale, hostile and unaccustomed to strange foods, whereas England makes her healthy, rose-cheeked and full of Zen. As the book's title unsubtly suggests, there is also a garden involved, complete with hidden door and buried key. But as new life springs forth in the garden, so blooms new hope in the wounded hearts of each character.
There is no single book that can more readily transport you into spring as you sit underneath a tree and listen to some bird whose name you don't remember whistle a tune that you do.
But the real reason to love this book is because, not unlike the garden hidden in plain sight around which it centers, the novel itself has its own dark secret....which is: It is not a very nice book, despite its goody-goody reputation. The Secret Garden is about neglect. Of plants and of people.
The Secret Garden is half charm, half wickedness, half summer and half winter. At one point Mary asks her maid why the garden was locked in the first place. She gradually learns of its painful history, but in that innocent question lies the lasting magic of The Secret Garden. It is always the flowers that one notices first before inspecting the dirt below.

A must read!
Ping

It was my favorite book as a young girl, too. I created a secret garden in the bottom of the closet, drawing pictures on the walls of the flowers, walls and gate. I used to sit in that closet with a flashlight to read more books. My parents actually left the drawings there until shortly before they moved many years later. There is a copy on my bookshelf and I take it out every few years to read again.

Oh, Cathy, what a great memory!! I remember when I was a kid and I wrote on the inside of my closet door...that isn't such a great memory! LOL!

Thank you, Terry Dave, for the splendid timing ... I am awaiting approval from HarperCollins, who now hold the copyright to the cover illustration by Tasha Tudor, before submitting my Dave's Garden article about The Secret Garden, a wonderful book for children and adults. And now that you have all been reminded, if you haven't read it, go grab a copy at the library, or do what my very grand grandmother did, and read it to your grandchild. xx, Carrie

Carrie, no grandchildren here...but lots of nieces and nephews to share with. I can't wait to read your article! I also can't wait to sit on the patio this summer and read to the kids...making more good memories....

:-)

Read it here free: http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Frances_Hodgson_Burnett/The_Secret_Garden/

I loved this book as a child, along with another of her books, The Little Princess, which was my favorite book for years. I liked the Little Princess better, as the heroine was a much more pleasant little girl who used her fantastic imagination to escape her dreary life. The Secret Garden always appealed to me, too, though, because I have always loved flowers, and loved how the beauty and hard work of the garden brought peace to Mary. I've wanted an English garden ever since I read this book!

So have a lot of us, witness the Cottage Gardening Forum here, just as one example! Sadly, for Anglophiles, most of the US doesn't have just the right combination of cools and warms that make the British climate so unique. x, Carrie

Great book. I read it so often as a child that I almost had it memorized. Mary and Colin and Dickon and Martha and old Ben and the robin who showed the way. The moors, the big house with all its rooms and corridors, and those great accents (even tho I had to guess at how they really sounded). It had everything that a little girl could want from a book... secrets, and special places, and true love, it was also about a little girl who nobody liked (mostly because nobody had ever taught her how to be likeable). And she blossomed along with the garden. Remember when she realized that two people actually liked her? "That's two for me", she said. Also, does anyone else remember the one thing she asked her uncle for: ".. a bit of earth', I think it was. Who among us has not thought the same...

Yes, Jo, you remember correctly. (I've read it recently. I guess I'd better finish the article now, hadn't I?)

Do you remember it as being chiefly a rose garden? Coming from GA, you might, I guess, but people aren't all that prone to starting rose gardens in New England. As an adult, I was surprised to find all the ROSES in there! I remembered, for more years than I shall divulge, "del-ph-ni-um". (That's Colin, reading aloud.) I HAD to have one, so I had one (1), as a specimen plant, in a pot, in the back yard (grass) on the patio. LOL.

BTW, despite my birthday cake wishes and dreams, I did not turn out to have a Martha or secret garden or fortune or English uncle a.k.a. guardian or any of those romantic things. My accent is still mine and I have few if any (LOL) manors in my future. Some would say few manners either, ha ha ha!

xx, Carrie

I love both the books and the movie! I voted England.

i love the book, and there is also an incredibly beautiful musical from 1991, written by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon. It is one of my all time favourite musicals. http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Garden-1991-Original-Broadway/dp/B000002862/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1207591458&sr=8-5

amy (theatre geek)
*

That was one of my favorite books as a child. Maybe I should re-read it. I loved the old house with all the mysterious rooms especially one where Mary found some ivory elephants. This was highly unlikely to happen to me in our suburban Arizona ranch -style house full of kids, but I wished it would! I also loved The Little Princess; not especially because of her good personality but because she had a wealthy, kind father to rescue her and restore her to her rightful place in the world! l.o.l.

I have only ever seen the movie, about 3 times, but now will read the book! For me "the book" is always much better than "the movie", although it was very well made and the all the cast were great, I thought so at least. It really touches the soul!

Never saw the movies, but I remember it being one of my favorite books growing up. I liked the Little Princess too...may have to go re-read both of them now and bring back fond childhood memories!

Loved it for many reasons but especially since it had a Martha in it!
Martha

Yes, and both you and the Martha in the book are such likable characters! x, Carrie

I'm not familiar with that book, but it sounds like I would like it. Didn't V.C. Andrews write a similar book w/almost tthe same characters, called "The Secret Garden"? I read that 20+ years ago & it reminds me of this book. Oh..... I just remembered to book's title! Not the same, "Flower in the Attic. But similar, I remember roses in that one. I was very young "under 10" and saddened by the book I read!

I liked Little Lord Fauntleroy both book and movie. 1936 Freddie Bartholomew, Mickey Rooney, Dolores Constanza Barrymore (Drew's Granny} and C. Aubrey Smith. Superb cast, kept pretty much to the story and it's great. They've remade it since, but I like this one best.
Martha

Ugh! Flowers in the attic was creepy!! With a capital C. which is what VC Andrews does. not like Secret Garden at all.
Martha

Many of the OZ books were dark and sinister too, not like the movie.

Was gonna say the exact same thing, Martha, those are not the same things at all. Flowers in the Attic is poisoning children with arsenic on the powdered donuts, The Secret Garden is helping children not die, but rather bloom along with the hidden garden. Plus about 75 or 85 years earlier, right? xx, Carrie

Speaking of books and movies, sorry to get off topic lol! I'm a sucker for Victorian novels and melodrama, tear-jerkers etc. I love that 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott, called "Little Women" and if you watch either of the 2 movies I know of, you will need 2 boxes of Kleenex, maybe 3 with the original version. The latest "remake" was good too and I loved Susan Sarandon and Winona Ryder in the lead roles. It certainly has it's sad/tragic parts, but ends happily like The Secret Garden, and shares a very positive message!

Well this sounds like a great book. I'll have to get it!

There's nothing dark and sinister or even remotely scary in Secret Garden, and it's not nearly so sentimental or preachy as Alcott's books. Just give it a quick peek and you'll be hooked!
After all, it is also a mystery. About a garden.... a secret garden.... behind a wall. You can see the tops of the trees, and birds fly in and out but where's the door...? Don't you want to go in and see what's growing in there? Don't you want to bring in a trowel, and help. :-)

Jassmer posted a link to the online version earlier in this thread in case you missed it..

Here's the link again: http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Frances_Hodgson_Burnett/The_Secret_Garden/index.html

I started reading it two days ago! ☺

The Little Princess is the author's redo of her Sara Crewe which is a tighter written bk, The little Princess is longer and not as good in my opinion. I came to Secret Garden to read to my children (Now grown) but had Little Lord fauntleroy as a child. The author lived in the US for a time, but all three bks are set in England.

Pinger42, if I read it I don't remember at my age, but your synopsis was so inviting and wonderful. Thanks for your time in sharing with us.
gail

I voted India - but my only knowledge was a Simpson's reference.

LOL a Simpson's reference? Like Homer and Marge? xx, Carrie