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Frances Hodgson Burnett
1849–1924
Born Manchester, England
A prolific novelist and playwright, Frances Hodgson Burnett is best remembered for three children's classics: Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). Born in Manchester, England, she and her widowed mother immigrated to the United States in 1865 in hopes of finding support from relatives. Yet it would be several years before Burnett would become financially independent by publishing fiction in popular magazines like Godey's Lady's Book, Scribner's Monthly, and Harper's. The success of Little Lord Fauntleroy all but secured her fame and fortune. The book sold more than half a million copies, and her dramatized version was popular as well.
Samuel Johnson Woolf made this charcoal portrait of Burnett shortly before her death. It bears both of their signatures, as Woolf requested that his sitters sign their portraits as a mark of authenticity.
Samuel Johnson Woolf (1880–1948)
Charcoal and chalk on paper, 1924
Gift of the artist's daughters, Muriel Woolf Hobson and Dorothy Woolf Ahern |