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Tiny Book Review: The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Many editions, 224 PP, 1909.
This is most definitely not an ordinary children's book, but a wonderful story with a powerful healing message that has been overlooked by many.
It is about Mary Lennox, a neglected, sickly and sour-faced little girl, orphaned in India, and sent to stay with her uncle, a Mr Archibald Craven, at Misselthwaite Manor, in Yorkshire.
Left to her own pursuits, Mary finds a mysterious abandoned garden, and secretly begins to nurture it.
While exploring the giant manor-house, she also discovers that she has an unhappy, spoilt and invalid cousin, Colin Craven.
With the complicity of a wonderful wild moor boy, Dickon Sowerby, and his animals, Mary and Colin begin to come to life and health, with the secret garden as the catalyst.
The children use exercises, diet, mantras, positive thinking/autosuggestion, fresh air, friendship, Nature (as manifest in the secret garden) and Love to bring about marvellous changes in their own health and personalities.
Whilst this book was written a century ago, now, its healing message is still as relevant today as it ever was.
The secret garden is a state of mind which all, without exception, can cultivate and nurture.
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Later...
Like all classics, The Secret Garden gets made, again and again, as films. I note that the Elsa Lanchester version, made in the early Fifties, omitted the Doxology. As if tampering with the plot wasn't bad enough, they had to leave Doxology out! The Maggie Smith version of recent decades, too, left out Doxology. The only version I've yet seen with Doxology included, and which was true to the book, was the 1975 BBC TV children's series--recently issued as a DVD. There was, also, about fifteen years ago, an excellent BBC Radio drama available as audio cassette. It starred Beryl Reid, and was beautifully done; true to story; and Doxology was sung nicely--by the children and Ben Weatherstaff.
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