The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel of Mary Lennox, a sour, spoilt orphan sent from India to her uncle’s house on the Yorkshire moors, who finds the key to a walled garden that has been locked for ten years.

Start reading27 chapters, about 81,000 words

Famous quotes

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

  Chapter IIn context

  • Children

• Mother says as th’ two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way⁠—or always to have it. She doesn’t know which is th’ worst.

  Chapter XVIIIIn context

  • Children

• One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever.

  Chapter XXIIn context

  • Life & Death

• At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done⁠—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.

  Chapter XXVIIIn context

  • Change
  • Ideas

• One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts⁠—just mere thoughts⁠—are as powerful as electric batteries⁠—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body.

  Chapter XXVIIIn context

  • Health
  • Thinking

• Where you tend a rose, my lad,
  A thistle cannot grow.

  Chapter XXVIIIn context

  • Nature
  • Thinking

Contents

1. Chapter IThere Is No One Left
2. Chapter IIMistress Mary Quite Contrary
3. Chapter IIIAcross the Moor
4. Chapter IVMartha
5. Chapter VThe Cry in the Corridor
6. Chapter VI“There Was Some One Crying—There Was!”
7. Chapter VIIThe Key of the Garden
8. Chapter VIIIThe Robin Who Showed the Way
9. Chapter IXThe Strangest House Any One Ever Lived In
10. Chapter XDickon
11. Chapter XIThe Nest of the Missel Thrush
12. Chapter XII“Might I Have a Bit of Earth?”
13. Chapter XIII“I Am Colin”
14. Chapter XIVA Young Rajah
15. Chapter XVNest Building
16. Chapter XVI“I Won’t!” Said Mary
17. Chapter XVIIA Tantrum
18. Chapter XVIII“Tha’ Munnot Waste No Time”
19. Chapter XIX“It Has Come!”
20. Chapter XX“I Shall Live Forever—and Ever—and Ever!”
21. Chapter XXIBen Weatherstaff
22. Chapter XXIIWhen the Sun Went Down
23. Chapter XXIIIMagic
24. Chapter XXIV“Let Them Laugh”
25. Chapter XXVThe Curtain
26. Chapter XXVI“It’s Mother!”
27. Chapter XXVIIIn the Garden