Literary comfort with a message: A Little Princess

In Frances Hodgson Burnett's tale, Sara Crewe is a paragon of inner strength and selflessness

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) was an incredibly prolific novelist, short story writer, playwright, and poet. Of her more than forty novels, it’s a trio of what are considered children’s novels — A Little Princess and The Secret Garden. Little Lord Fauntleroy comes in at a somewhat distant third.

Beloved children’s literature that has stood the test of time is the best kind of literary “comfort food” for children of all ages. A Little Princess belongs squarely in that category. In today’s edition of Literary Ladies Lite, I’ll pay tribute to this timeless tale, with a synopsis, film adaptations, and quotes from the book.

The story of A Little Princess follows a young girl who faces abandonment at a posh boarding school in London with a cruel headmistress. Losing all that’s dear to her, not least her adored father, Sara manages not only to retain her poise and dignity, but to be kind, generous, and compassionate to those even less fortunate than she.

The novel is an expansion of Burnett’s novella, Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin’s Boarding School, first published in December 1887. The riches-to-rags story was so successful that in 1902, she adapted it into a three-act stage play titled A Little Un-Fairy Princess. After a successful production on Broadway, Burnett’s publisher urged her to expand the story of Sara Crewe into a full-length novel.

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“Whatever comes … cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”

. . . . . . . .

The book was published in September 1905 with the title A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Being Told for the First Time. The novel has since been adapted into several film versions, TV shows, musicals, and other theatrical productions.

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A brief plot description

From the 2004 Sterling Publishing edition of A Little Princess:

“When Sara Crewe first arrived at her private English boarding school, she was treated like a little princess. The richest and best-dressed girl in the school, she was given the prettiest room, her own pony, a maid to wait on her, and the fawning attention of the headmistress, Miss Minchin.