Sara Crewe, Little Saint Elizabeth, and other stories
1897
- children's literature
- classics
- short stories
- coming-of-age
- friendship
- family
- boarding school
- poverty
- wealth
- magic
The story
Sara Crewe, Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories is collection of short stories by Frances Hodgson Burnett. - Sara Crewe or What happen at Miss Minchin's - Little Saint Elizabeth - The Story of Prince Fairyfoot - The Proud Little Grain of Wheat - Behind the White Brick A Little Princess is a 1905 children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It is a revised and expanded version of Burnett's 1888 serialised novel entitled Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's Boarding School, which was published in St. Nicholas Magazine. According to Burnett, she had been composing a play based on the story when she found out a lot of characters she had missed. The publisher asked her to publish a new, revised story of the novella, producing the novel.
What it’s like
Gentle Victorian prose with a warm, storyteller's voice that drifts into fairy-tale cadence, full of candlelit schoolrooms, coal-smoke London fog, and sudden glimpses of enchantment. The collection moves between stern boarding-house corridors, bare garrets and lush imagined palaces, so the mood shifts from chilly, restrained unease to tender, wish-fulfilling warmth. Sentences are ornate and unhurried, with frequent direct address and sentiment that leans earnest rather than sly. Because the pieces are short, each tale lands quickly and reads like a bedtime story rather than a heavy novel. Adult cruelty takes the form of petty humiliation and cold neglect, and hunger and cold are described plainly, but there is no violence and little fear. It suits a rainy Sunday, a comfort reread, or reading aloud to a child, and it suits readers who love old-fashioned stories of resilience, kindness and a small heroine's dignity, touched with magic.
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