The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett first published in book form in 1911, after serialisation in The American Magazine
At the beginning of the 20th century, 10-year-old Mary Lennox finds herself ignored and neglected by her wealthy English parents. Native servants in British India primarily care for Mary and spoil her until the Lennox estate is ravaged by a cholera epidemic that kills her parents. With the servants fleeing for their lives, Mary is left alone until she is found by the British Army.
Eventually relocated to her uncle Archibald Craven’s home in the Yorkshire Moors of the English countryside, the spoiled and sour Mary now faces a life quite unlike her pampered upbringing. However, all of that changes when Mary’s maid Martha Sowerby reveals a hidden treasure at the Craven home: a secret garden, walled away after the death of Archibald’s wife Lilias, awaiting its rediscovery.