A Little Princess

A Little Princess is a story by Frances Hodgson Burnett that exists in three versions: a novella published in 1888, a play staged in 1902 and the children's novel of 1905. All of them tell the story of Sara Crewe, the prize pupil at a London boarding school who is reduced to poverty and made a servant under the school's headmistress.

Sara comes from India, where her father made his money, and Miss Minchin keeps her comfortable partly because she expects the arrangement to continue. Word arrives that her father has died and lost his fortune, and she is moved into the attic, dressed in plain clothes, fed little and given the work of the house, which she does while keeping the manners of the pupil she used to be.

Burnett returned to the story repeatedly because the character of a child who behaves well without any reward interested her, and the 1905 novel expands the school and the household around Sara to show how nearly everyone in it is at the mercy of money. The book's lasting image is not the fortune restored but the cold attic and the small loyalties formed there.