The White People

Frances Hodgson Burnett, (1849 - 1924) was an English-American playwright and author. She is best known for her children's stories, The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy. After her father's death in 1854 her family lived in poverty in the Victorian slums of Manchester. After moving to Tennessee her mother died in 1867 which made Frances the sole support of the younger children. It was at this point that she began to write. After the death of her son Burnett began considering life after death. She wrote about it in this warm and old-fashioned book. The White People is the story of a young woman with unusual insight living as a semi-recluse in the Scottish Highlands. A passage from the book reads. "The first hour she was like a dead thing--aye, like a dead thing that had never lived. But when the hand of the clock passed the last second, and the new hour began, I bent closer to her because I saw a change stealing over her. It was not color--it was not even a shadow of a motion. It was something else. If I had spoken what I felt, they would have said I was light-headed with grief and have sent me away. I have never told man or woman. It was my secret and hers. I can tell you, Ysobel. The change I saw was as if she was beginning to listen to something--to listen."