A Little Princess

A Little Princess is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, better known for Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden. It concerns the troubles of a wealthy young girl, Sara Crewe, who is sent to an oppressive London boarding school during her father's campaign in India. Thanks to Capt. Crewe's money, Sara is treated as a little princess until, one day, word comes of her father's tragic death. Miss Minchin, the school's greedy headmistress, wastes no time in putting the now-penniless Sara to work for her room and board. It is only through the friendship of two other girls, her own resolute nature, and some astonishing luck that Sara eventually finds her way back to happiness.

The books and the play

The story was first serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine then published as the novella Sara Crewe, or What Happened at Miss Minchin's in 1888, after a period Burnett spent travelling across Europe with her family. This version of the tale, while not differing in plot or characters, is only just over one-third the length of the later novel expansion. It lacks much of the detail and character development that makes the novel so charming to audiences today.

Related Topics:
St. Nicholas Magazine - 1888

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Burnett returned to the material in 1902, penning the three-act stageplay A Little Un-fairy Princess, which ran in London over the autumn of that year. Around the time it transferred to New York at the start of 1903, however, the title was shortened to the one with which it became famous: A Little Princess. (It was A Little Princess in London, but The Little Princess in New York.)

Related Topics:
1902 - London - New York - 1903

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The play was a success on Broadway, and it is probable that this triumph is what led Burnett to revise it yet again, this time as an expanded, full-length novel, published in 1905. Both versions of the book remain in print, although the later novel is by far the better known.

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