Frances Eliza Hodgson was born on November 24, 1849, in Manchester, England, the third of Edwin Hodgson’s and Eliza Boond’s five children. Her father ran a prosperous firm, which specialized in the trade of decorative arts for the interiors of houses. At the time, Manchester was experiencing a textile boom, which infused the town with a rising middle-class, and because these families were erecting magnificent houses, Hodgson’s merchandise was in demand. The prosperity of the Hodgson family was cut short in 1854 when Edwin suffered a stroke. Even more devastating to the family fortune was the American Civil War, which caused a cessation of cotton shipments from Southern plantations, crippling Manchester’s economy. Eliza Hodgson decided to emigrate to America, and in 1865, when Burnett was sixteen, the family settled in a small town about twenty-five miles from Knoxville, Tennessee. This move would prove instrumental in Burnett’s development as a writer. Although she had always been obsessed with storytelling and often amused her schoolmates by acting out tales of adventure and romance, the financial strain of the emigration caused her to turn to writing as a means of supplement
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