Overview

"Frances Hodgson Burnett's favorite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom. On the surface, Frances' life was extremely successful: hosting regular literary salons in her home and travelling frequently between properties in the United Kingdom and America. But behind the colorful personal and social life, she was a complex and contradictory character. She lost both parents by her twenty-first birthday, Henry James called her ""the most heavenly of women"" although avoided her; prominent people admired her and there were many friendships as well as an ill-advised marriage to a much younger man that ended in heartache. Her success was punctuated by periods of depression, in one instance brought on by the tragic loss of her eldest son to consumption. Ann Thwaite creates a sympathetic but balanced and eye-opening biography of the woman who has enchanted numerous generations of children."

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Ann Thwaite is a Whitbread-Prize-winning biographer and children's writer. She was born in London and was educated at Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet, and St Hilda's College, Oxford. She has written several major biographies. A. A. Milne: His Life won the Whitbread Biography of the Year in 1990. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of Roehampton University (National Centre for Research into Children's Literature). She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia and a D. Litt from Oxford. She lives in Norfolk with her husband, the poet Anthony Thwaite. Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first novel when she was nine years old, and she has been writing ever since. She is now one of Britain's bestselling and most beloved children's authors. She has written over 100 books and is the creator of characters such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather. More than forty million copies of her books have been sold. As well as winning many awards for her books, including the Children's Book of the Year, Jacqueline is a former Children's Laureate, and in 2008 she was appointed a Dame. Jacqueline is also a great reader, and has amassed over 20,000 books, along with her famous collection of silver rings. Find out more about Jacqueline and her books at JacquelineWilson.co.uk Anne Flosnik is an accomplished, multi-award-winning British actress, with lead credits for stage, television, commercials, industrials, voice-overs, and audiobooks. Anne has garnered three AudioFile Earphones Awards, an ALA Award, and four Audie Award nominations. Her narration of Little Bee by Chris Cleave was chosen as one of the Best Audiobooks of the Year 2009 by AudioFile magazine and one of the Top 40 Best Audiobooks of 2009 by Library Journal.

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