Arts
Courtesy of Gutenberg.org
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the novel "The Secret Garden" by Francis Hodgson Burnett, the College's Leslie Center for the Humanities co-sponsored a conference this past weekend organized by English professor Gretchen Gerzina author of "Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of the Secret Garden" and English department librarian Laura Braunstein.
The children's book, published in 1911, remains one of Burnett's most popular works, according to Gerzina, who presented the keynote address on Friday.
"We are so familiar with this book and its impact on boys and girls around the world that it's hard to imagine that it was appreciated, but not celebrated, in its own time that it took decades for it to achieve the kind of fame that we associate with it today," Gerzina said in the address.
The centennial conference included an exhibit in Rauner Special Collections Library, a screening of the 1949 film adaptation starring Margaret O'Brien on Friday and a series of panels with biographers, children's literature editors and relatives of Burnett on Saturday to discuss topics from biography writing to editing and collecting.
Burnett wrote 53 novels, wrote numerous stories and magazine articles and produced 13 plays on both London's West End and Broadway, according to Gerzina.
Burnett "see-sawed" across the Atlantic between her original home in England and America, her adopted home, 33 times, according to Gerzina.
"Americans thought of her as American, and the English though of her as English," Gerzina said.
Gerzina's keynote opened the conference after an introduction by Dean of the Libraries Jeffrey Horrel, which focused on the themes of illness and disability in the context of Victorian society.
Friday's reception was held in Rauner for a viewing of the exhibition, entitled "Cultivating Secret Gardens: Frances Hodgson Burnett and Children's Fiction," curated by Braunstein and special collections librarian Jay Satterfield.
The collection consists of materials ranging from first editions of the novel to film and play adaptations.
"The exhibition is really important to put materials in context and to understand any individual item by seeing things around it and having the curator give some sort of narrative to it," Braunstein said.
Burnett was instrumental in advocating for authors' rights to retain control of adaptations of their novels and characters, according to Braunstein.
