Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright.

She was born, one of five children, near Manchester, England. She was four when her father died in 1852, leaving her mother with many money worries. An uncle living in America invited the family to move to Tennessee, so they went to start a new life there. Frances began writing to help her mother financially. Her early stories appeared regularly in magazines. She married in 1873 and had two children, a girl and a boy.

With the money from her writing, she bought a house in England in 1898.