Frances Eliza Hodgson was born to Edwin and Eliza (Boond) Hodgson in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England on November 24, 1845. Her father died in 1854 and her mother struggled to maintain her late husband's business until 1865, when her brother persuaded her to emigrate to Knoxville, Tennessee where he had established a prosperous dry goods store. Their first few years in America proved difficult, and Frances began selling her short stories to earn money in 1868. Her output slowed in 1873 when she married ophthalmologist Swan Moses Burnett. The couple had two sons, Lionel (1874-1890) and Vivian (1876-1937), and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1877. Frances often traveled apart from her family and met such literary personalities as Henry James and Israel Zangwill. The marriage ended in 1898, and Frances married Steven Townsend in 1900; they divorced two years later. To support her increasingly lavish lifestyle, Frances wrote innumerable short stories and over twenty novels, including The Lass o' Lowrie's (1877), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), The Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1910). She settled in Long Island, New York in 1909 and divided her later years between New York and Bermuda. She died in Long Island, New York, on October 29, 1924.

The Little Princess, was adapted to film in 1939, starred Shirley Temple, Anita Louise, and Cesar Romero. The Secret Garden was adapted to film in 1949 and starred Margaret O'Brien, Herbert Marshall, Dean Stockwell, and Gladys Cooper.