A Little Princess
Front cover of the first edition (1905)
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| Author | Frances Hodgson Burnett |
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| Illustrator |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
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Publication date
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September 1905 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 324 |
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| Copyright: Public Domain (In most Countries) | |
A Little Princess is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published as a book in 1905. It is an expanded version of the short story Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's, which was serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine from December 1887. According to Burnett, after she composed the 1902 play A Little Un-fairy Princess based on that story, her publisher asked that she expand the story as a novel with "the things and people that had been left out before". The novel was published by Charles Scribner's Sons (also publisher of St. Nicholas) with illustrations by Ethel Franklin Betts and the full title A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Being Told for the First Time.
Based on a 2007 online poll, the U.S. National Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012 it was ranked number 56 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience. It was the second of two Burnett novels among the Top 100, with The Secret Garden number 15.
Captain Ralph Crewe, a wealthy English widower, enrolls his young daughter Sara, who had been living in India, at Miss Minchin's boarding school for girls in London, to prepare her for a life in high society. Crewe so dotes on his daughter as to order, and to pay the headmistress for, such special treatment and exceptional luxuries as a private room for Sara with a personal maid and a separate sitting room, along with Sara's own private carriage and a pony. Miss Minchin openly fawns over Sara for her money, but secretly and jealously despises her for her wealth. Miss Minchin's younger sister, Amelia, is kindhearted yet her will is weak.
Despite her privilege, Sara is neither arrogant nor snobbish, but rather amiable, gracious, and kind. She extends her friendship to Ermengarde, the school dunce, to Lottie, a four-year-old student given to tantrums, and to Becky, the lowly, stunted fourteen-year-old scullery maid. When Sara acquires the epithet of a princess, she embraces its favorable elements always in her natural goodheartedness everywhere there.
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Wikipedia