The Secret Garden

A newly illustrated edition of this classic tale by one of Australia’s greatest children’s book illustrators.

"When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable looking child ever seen." So begins Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic, regarded as one of the best children's books of the 20th century. The story of a spoilt, neglected and sickly young girl, who comes to the home of Mr Craven, her widowed and grieving uncle, The Secret Garden was first serialised for adults in The American Magazine before its publication in book form in 1911.

The Secret Garden is a walled, overgrown paradise, its roses abandoned since the death of Mr Craven's wife. Mary is led to its ivy-covered door by a robin, and with the help of a servant's son, Dickon, begins to tend it. Her petulance mellows, and the garden also helps to bring the transformation of wheelchair-bound and tantrum-throwing Colin, the son that Craven keeps hidden away - and of the uncle himself.

In this edition, beautifully illustrated by award-winning Robert Ingpen, the full and unabridged text is accompanied by hand drawings that bring the garden, and the young people it touches, back into bloom.

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Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) was born and lived her early life in Manchester, England. When her father, a successful merchant, had a stroke and the American Civil War crippled the city's economy the impoverished family emigrated to a small rural town in Tennessee. A storyteller since her youth, Frances started to write for an income. The author of more than 40 books, her breakthrough novel came with Little Lord Fauntleroy, which became a bestseller. Her work was compared to that of Charlotte Brontë and Henry James. Unhappily married, and after the death of her son, Lionel, she moved to England in 1890 and rented an estate with several walled gardens. It was in the rose garden, her outdoor studio, that the notion of The Secret Garden was born.

Robert Ingpen was born in Geelong, Australia. He began studying illustration art and book design over fifty years ago at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and has designed, written and illustrated more than one hundred works of fiction and non-fiction. In 1986, Ingpen received the highest honour in the children’s book world, the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, for his contribution to international children's literature. He has also recently been awarded an honorary doctorate from RMIT and granted Membership of the Order of Australia for services to literature. He and his wife Angela live and work in Anglesea near their home town of Geelong. In recent times, he has illustrated editions of classic works such as The Jungle Book, Treasure Island, A Christmas Carol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the centenary editions of Peter Pan and Wendy and The Wind in the Willows.

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