Sara's transformation: a textual analysis of Frances Hodgson Burnett's Sara Crewe and A Little Princess

Abstract

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s life revolved around her love of story-telling, her sons, nature, and the idealized notion of childhood. Burnett had an ability to recapture universal aspects of childhood and transform them into realistic stories containing elements of the fantastic or fairy tales. Her ability to tell stories started at a young age when she and her sisters were given permission to write on old pieces of paper. Burnett’s love for storytelling, reading, and writing was fostered in her parents’ household, in which a young Burnett was given free reign to explore her parents’ book collection and also left unhindered to imagine and act out stories by herself and with her sisters and close friends. Later her love for telling tales became a means of providing for her family—beginning with short story submissions to magazines. Although Burnett did not necessarily start out writing for children her career ended up along that path after the success in 1886 of her first children’s book, Little Lord Fauntleroy. After this success, she was a recognizable author on both sides of the Atlantic. Sara Crewe; or, What Happened at Miss Minchin’s, the 1887–88 serial publication in St. Nicholas magazine and the 1888 short story publication both were titled the same, and the subsequent reworkings of Sara’s world in the forms of two plays, A little un-fairy princess (England, 1902), and A Little Princess; Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe, Now Told for the First Time (United States, 1903), and the 1905 full-length novel which retained the American 1903 play’s title, outlines the creative process that Burnett undertook while exploring the world of Sara Crewe. By examining the above forms, readers and scholars gain an insight into not only the differences between the forms, but also a view of how the author approached adapting an already published work, and the influence of editors on an authors work. The examination of the development of Sara’s timeline will bring light onto Burnett’s growth as a writer and specifically her transition into her role as a children’s literature author.