Description

“THE MOST SATISFYING CHILDREN’S BOOK”: FINE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION OF THE SECRET GARDEN, IN RARE ORIGINAL DUST JACKET, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR

BURNETT, Frances Hodgson. The Secret Garden. London: William Heinemann, 1911. Thick octavo, original green cloth gilt, first English edition dust jacket supplied from another copy; housed in a custom clamshell box. 

Scarce first English edition—the first to contain Charles Robinson’s eight beautiful color plates—in very rare original dust jacket, inscribed on the half title, “Yours Sincerely Frances Hodgson Burnett 1915.”

Burnett’s “best and most enduring work…. never ceases to gain new admirers, and has been called… ‘the most satisfying children’s book” (Carpenter & Prichard, 89). Although born in England, Burnett moved with her family to the United States as an adolescent, and began writing at a young age in part to support her family. She spent much of her adulthood living a transatlantic life, going back and forth from England to the United States, often yearly. Her inspiration for the setting of this most English of stories came from the decade she lived at Maytham Hall, in Kent, of which she has written: “Once I lived in a place in England which was something like Misselthwaite Manor. It had not a hundred rooms but it had a great many & it had fine walled gardens. When I first went to live in it, the gardens had been neglected for many years. I made one of them into a Rose garden something like the Secret Garden Mary Lennox found. There were other gardens outside & a big park… & a little gate like the one Mary went through when she found Dickon. I had a tame robin there which used to sit on my shoulder and fly to me the minute I came through the little green door in the wall. All these things made me write the Secret Garden.” This first English edition, published one month after the first (American) edition, is the first to feature eight beautiful color plates by artist Charles Robinson. Robinson was influenced by the “aesthetic” movement of the late 19th century, which paid attention to the entire design of a book—typography to plates to endpapers to binding. BAL 2115. Gift inscription dated the year of Burnett’s inscription.

Text with a bit of foxing to fore-edge, minor rubbing to cloth extremities; dust jacket (supplied from another copy) with a few shallow chips, closed tears along spine, mild toning to spine. Most rare and desirable both inscribed and in the original dust jacket.