The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in 1909. It is one of Burnett's most popular novels, and is now considered a classic of children's literature. Mary Lennox is a sickly, sour-faced little girl who was born in India to wealthy, British parents. Her parents mostly ignore her, leaving her in the care of their servant Ayah. When a cholera epidemic makes her an orphan, she is sent to Misselthwaite Manor, an isolated country house in Yorkshire, England. There she is again left mostly to her own devices - this time by her mother's brother-in-law, Archibald Craven, a widower who travels constantly in hopes of escaping painful memories of his beautiful young wife who has been dead for ten years. The Manor is left in the charge of the stern Mrs. Medlock. The only person who has any time for Mary is the chambermaid Martha, who tells Mary about a walled garden that was the late Mrs. Craven's favourite. No one has entered the garden since she died because her grieving widower locked it and buried the key.