Talk:Frances Hodgson Burnett

Untitled

I was very disappointed by all the links that did not exist yet. That needs to be addressed and corrected by Wikipedia to maintain interest and credibility in your site. I would not send a student to this site at the present time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.234.199.32 (talk) 17:32, 17 January 2004 (UTC)

Removed from the article:

Project Gutenberg contains a large number of her works but not, it is clear from other online bibliographies, all of them. Notable (to me at least!) in particular is the absence of the novel Robin, a sequel to The Head of The House Of Coombe. This absence is particularly noticable because the final paragraph of The Head of The House Of Coombe tells us that the story continues in Robin. According to an online bibliography, Robin was published in 1922, as was The Head of The House Of Coombe and I consequently deduce that it, too, should be out of copyright and available for transformation into e-text. I would very willingly volunteer to start this transformation by scanning the novel and starting it in Project Gutenberg's catalogue, if only I had access to it! If you do have a copy you would be willing to lend me, please contact me, Jenny Radcliffe, and I'll send my address!

Racketty-Packetty House?

Classic Online link removal?

I noticed Pavlo Moloshtan posted a link to to a page for Frances Hodgson Burnett, then Mwanner deleted it, labeling the change "rv spam". I think that's a bit harsh. I checked the ClassicOnline.org page out -- like the other links for this author, it contains additional biographical information on Burnett not found in this article or in the other external sites linked in this article. It's a non-commercial site and Pavlo Moloshtan appears to have posted the link to be helpful to readers. It's certainly of no lesser value than than the other links in this article.

I also read the note left on Pavlo Moloshtan's talk page:
"See WP:EL. Wikipedia is not a link farm. Links should only be added if they have valuable information that does not belong in the article itself. If the information in the link does belong it the article, it should be re-written (to avoid copyright issues) and added to the article. In general, articles should have very few links, because very few links fit these criteria. The idea is that we want our articles to be the best possible source of information on a topic, not a short article followed by a long list of links to other articles-- one might as well just google the subject and read the first dozen sites if we are going to assemble long external link lists."

Whether or not this link should be in the article, I think it's harsh and unnecessary to delete a good-faith editing effort and label it "spam". It seems more polite (and better for the Wikipedia project) to thank the person for the link and then encourage them to add more information based on the link. At the same time, one could also genially get across the Wikipedia policy on external links. This approach seems in line with the general Wikipedia culture of encouraging other volunteers while continuing to improve the Wikipedia.

Is there something I'm missing here?--A. B. 18:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'll answer my own question. I missed the fact that Pavlo owns Classic Online and only found out about it when I went to find out more information about the site and got the Whois report for the site. It looks like a good site, but I believe it's against Wikipedia policy (or guidelines) to link to your own site.--A. B. 19:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Have you read WP:EL? Site owners are told not to add links to their own sites (see Links to normally avoid, #10), precisely to avoid situations like this one. Did you look at this editor's contributions? This is not a user trying to be helpful (at least, not to us)-- this is a user trying to build traffic to his own site by using Wikipedia's high traffic. Sure his site is non-commercial now-- the whole idea is to gain traffic so it's worth going commercial.

I admire your effort to assume good faith, but the work of spammers is not the place to start doing it. Think about it-- if this user worked on our articles instead of adding links to his own, the reader is way better off than he is if he has to read two very similar articles on the same subject. So who is he trying to help?

Finally, I'm a little worried about where Moloshtan got his material-- check out this sentence from his article on Kate Chopin: "Kate Chopin Home TodayThe house had fallen into a serious state of disrepair, when Mildred McCoy, a lifelong resident..."[1]. Kinda seems like he has copied it along with a subject heading ("Kate Chopin Home Today") from some other source.

I could show you a dozen other contribution lists from spammers, and one thing they all have in common is that virtually the only work they ever do on our articles is to add external links. By their works shall ye know them (or something like that). -- Mwanner | Talk 19:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, found the source for his Kate Chopin story: [2]. -- Mwanner | Talk 19:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

First husband's name

I'm just curious--in the text, her first husband was cited as Dr. Donovan Brisk and later there was a mention of divorcing Dr. Burnett. Were they they same person? If not, at what point was Burnett added to her name? Mary-Theresa 21:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Reason for India?

Although I only really know of her from The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, is there any particular reason why Burnett gave them both connections to India? Did she ever travel there, or did she hear stories about India from a friend or family member? Or did she just have a random fascination with the country? Just a question I'd been wondering about for a while. Irish♣Pearl 20:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I always attributed it to the time period, with the British owning India at the time and more and more British people being born, living in, and writing about exotic, fanciful India. A few searches later, I cannot find anything about her traveling there, although I think it would be unlikely since she mainly ferried between the US and UK. It's always possible that she knew of someone who did visit there, of course, but who's to say? Very interesting question, though, and it definitely pertains to the writer's source of inspiration. I'll keep on the look-out.  :) María (habla conmigo) 16:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Age at Mother's Death

The article says "Following the death of her mother in 1872, 18 year old Frances found herself the head of a family of four younger siblings". However, her birthdate is given at 1849, which would have made her about 23 if her mother died in 1872. Simhedges 16:26, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Hodgson

Any relation to William Hope Hodgson ?

New Babylon 2 (talk) 12:36, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

www.burnett.co.uk

But Burnett had nothing to do with computer insurance! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kayau (talk • contribs) 14:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Removed this link (after first fixing it so it would work without checking the link, oops). Digitante (talk) 05:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Infobox

An editor has removed the infobox from the article. I'm not sure that this is an improvement. I've already reverted one removal, and this removal at least reduces the image to a thumb. Opening up for discussion. Mjroots (talk) 14:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Check the edit history - I've taken a break from this page am not quite done but am preparing for GA. Temptlating regulars as you have on my page isn't the best way to start a conversation. In my mind, per WP:DISINFOBOX, the box is not necessary: Burnett was born in Manchester (England); moved at 16 to the US; liveed in Paris as a young woman with her husband & then Washington D.C; lived much of her life in both England and the US; became a US citizen late in life. Will the infobox tell us whether she's American or British? Will the infobox tell us whether her literature is American or British? A great majority of the stories are set in England/ Europe and were written there. So, as you see it's quite confusing, and when it's confusing I prefer not to have an infobox. However I can, or anyone else, rewrite the lead with the pertinent facts to replace the infobox. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 14:16, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it would be better to use {{infobox person}} instead of {{infobox writer}}? Anyway, good luck with the GA. Mjroots (talk) 14:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

IMO the box is not necessary...Modernist (talk) 14:36, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Books missing from list of works

Her 1917 novel The White People is missing from the list of works. It's here

  http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?author=burnett%2C+frances&amode=words&title=&tmode=words

and here

  http://books.google.com/books/about/The_white_people.html?id=_94QAAAAYAAJ

among other places, but I'm not sure of the right way to reference and footnote when I add it, so maybe someone else should. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.192.33.140 (talk) 22:51, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

---

That's by far not the only missing work in that extremely selective "Selected Works" list - which I find very frustrating, because I came here to try to find original publication dates for her books His Grace of Osmonde (the sequel to A Lady of Quality) and The Dawn of a To-Morrow.

(If anyone here can direct me to either, not merely transcription dates, that would be welcome - thank you!)

--2.29.52.147 (talk) 04:32, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Picking a single name to refer to FHB

This article vacillates between referring to its subject as Frances, Eliza, Hodgson, and Burnett, I suspect because it has been edited by multiple people. However it would clearly be more readable if it picked one or two forms to be used when a mononym is required. Although Burnett is her married name, it's the name under which FHB is typically alphabetized (eg at Project Gutenberg), so I propose using it in all contexts after she is married, even after she divorces Swan Burnett, since her later work continues to be published using Burnett. Previous to that, I favour either Frances or Hodgson since she is never cited as Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett so I think "Eliza" is confusing to the casual reader (I'm guessing from its use at all that she may have been known as Eliza to her friends or in her youth perhaps? But a note to this effect would be sufficient). As no one has touched this talk page since 2012, I'm just going to go ahead and start trying to regularize. --Gretchenmcc (talk) 21:50, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Update: nevermind, on looking at it again the "Elizas" actually refer to her mother, so the name thing is fine, but clearly that's not totally evident so I tried to make that clearer. --Gretchenmcc (talk) 22:00, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I've done most of the heavy lifting here and typically use Frances because there are so many other surnames involved. It's bulky to refer to her as Hodgson-Burnett, her published name. I meant to use this as example for SlimVirgin's essay about writing about women, but I haven't gotten around to responding there. If consensus is to refer to her as Hodgson, I suppose we could do that but it doesn't follow WP:Commonname. Haven't a clue how the Elizas came in. I abandoned the article for lack of good sourcing, but it needs quite a lot of work still. Victoria (tk) 22:10, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Struck about not knowing where the Eliza's came from. Yes, having decided to use "Frances" it seemed logical to me to use "Eliza" for her mother. I suppose we could refer to her mother as Hodgson but it gets confusing because her father was also Hodgson. Hence in situations like that I tend to use baptismal names for everyone. Victoria (tk) 22:46, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about that, I think I just saw Frances and Eliza and Hodgson in the same paragraph and got confused, but then when I went to actually try to edit it I realize that the second two are actually the parents. I think Burnett is fine as that's what she gets alphabetized under. Maybe use her father's first name to create a parallel to her mother though? Also, I've been trying to add to the pages of FHB's works -- you're welcome to also add to those if you like! Notably the two that got republished relatively recently, The Shuttle (novel) and The Making of a Marchioness, which means there's at least enough information about them to make them no longer redlinks. --Gretchenmcc (talk) 07:14, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Lead summary

The four-paragraph lead includes a three-paragraph biographical summary -- too long, perhaps entirely unnecessary. --P64 (talk) 20:20, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Who is ORES

Hi Rosiestep I noted your recent edit summary here, [3] and am curious what ORES is? I did most of the expansion to this article years ago but stopped because I didn't have access to some important sources. Some key sections are missing and the prose has never been polished, so who is predicting FA? Just curious. I've never seen that. Victoriaearle (tk) 20:27, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi Victoriaearle; that's a good question! Here's some info on ORES (Objective Revision Evaluation Service). And here's a link to the tool. The first step in asking ORES to predict the class rating of an article is to click on the "Permanent link" link (it's in the left column of the article). After clicking it just now, the url ends with: 809490329. If you paste 809490329 at the end of https://ores.wmflabs.org/v2/scores/enwiki/wp10/ (like so: https://ores.wmflabs.org/v2/scores/enwiki/wp10/809490329), you'll see what ORES predicts is the article rating. Now, we know that an article needs to go through a review process for GA and FA, so we can't unilaterally assign GA or FA for the class rating, but we can rate it as high as B in this case. Note, too, that ORES is based on formulas and is imperfect. Seasoned editors may be better predictors of a class rating, buut it can be helpful to see what a tool predicts. Quite frankly, I use it all the time. Hope this helps? --Rosiestep (talk) 20:41, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Huh. Interesting. Thanks so much! The issue here is that there's a biography I never bothered to buy, could only get limited views of pages on g-books, but it really needs to be used to flesh out the detail. Most of the article uses only a couple of sources, so it's not comprehensive. Also it needs a writing style and themes section (requires research!) and then lots of prose work. But, yeah, B is probably about right. I'm not sure about GA without the missing sections, and definitely not FA. Victoriaearle (tk) 20:48, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Second husband's surname

The article linked in this article spells his surname "TownEsend", with a note stating " His second name has also been cited as Townsend"; in the interest of apparent accuracy, then, this article ought to give "TownEsend" in each case, surely, given that was apparently the man's actual name? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.24.232.230 (talk) 17:34, 22 December 2023 (UTC)