The Romantick Lady (Frances Hodgson Burnett): The Life Story of an Imagination

New York/London: Charles Scribner's Sons. Very Good. 1927. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [front hinge a little weak, but otherwise a good sound copy, with some spotting/foxing on the top edge of the text block; small vintage bookplate on the front pastedown]. (B&W plates) A biography of the author of the children's classics "The Secret Garden," "A Little Princess," and "Little Lord Fauntleroy," written several years after her death by the younger of her two sons (who was said to have been the model for the latter character). Obviously Vivian had unfettered access to his mother's papers -- the book quotes extensively from her correpondence -- but his obvious high regard for her, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have compelled him to place them in an appropriate library or archive, as an online search turns up no such resource. (In a rather fanciful introduction -- actually titled "Fantasy" -- he asserts that her creative nature was due to her having been "partly a fairy, [as] she herself was quite willing -- even eager -- to admit." He goes on to spin a tale of how his mother, "a princess," had been visited upon her birth by a gaggle of fairies, who showered her with their blessings and imbued her with her many fine qualities.) .