Free to read
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Set first in India and then at Misselthwaite Manor on England’s Yorkshire moors, The Secret Garden follows Mary Lennox as she discovers a locked garden.
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Children / family fiction
- Length
- 27 chapters · About 7 hours
- First published
- 1911
- Availability
- Free
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Where is The Secret Garden set?
The story begins in India, then moves to Misselthwaite Manor on the Yorkshire moors in England.
For readers who like nature, friendship and gradual change; some dialogue uses Yorkshire dialect.
Read it in English. This starter edition is free.
THE OPENING PAGES
Try the first few lines.
When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle
everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body,
thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her
face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been
ill in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the
English Government and had always been busy and ill himself, and her
mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and
amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at all,
and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who
was made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she
must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a
sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when
she became a sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the
way also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark
faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always
obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem
Sahib would…Start reading this book ↗