The Secret Garden

A newly illustrated edition of this classic tale by one of Australia’s greatest children’s book illustrators.

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable looking child ever seen.

So begins Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic, regarded as one of the best children’s books of the 20th century. The story of a spoilt, neglected and sickly young girl, who comes to the home of Mr Craven, her widowed and grieving uncle, The Secret Garden was first serialised for adults in The American Magazine before its publication in book form in 1911.

The Secret Garden is a walled, overgrown paradise, its roses abandoned since the death of Mr Craven’s wife. Mary is led to its ivy-covered door by a robin, and with the help of a servant’s son, Dickon, begins to tend it. Her petulance mellows, and the garden also helps to bring the transformation of wheelchair-bound and tantrum-throwing Colin, the son that Craven keeps hidden away – and of the uncle himself.

In this edition, beautifully illustrated by award-winning Robert Ingpen, the full and unabridged text is accompanied by hand drawings that bring the garden, and the young people it touches, back into bloom.