The Secret Garden

A short, warm classic about two spoiled children who get better outdoors. The first seven chapters are slow and the Yorkshire dialect takes getting used to, but the robin, the spring and the garden carry it. It is of its time in how it talks about India. Four and a half out of five (draft). Read it if: you like cozy classics where a place and the seasons do much of the work; you want a book about stubborn, lonely children who change; you enjoy animals, gardens and weather described with love. Skip it if: you want fast plotting: the first seven chapters mostly set the scene; dialect on every page wears you out (tha', nowt, wick); period remarks about india and its servants will bother you; they appear in chapters one, four and eight.

Our ending explained covers the final chapters in full, with spoilers. The Secret Garden ending explained: Mr. Craven's dream, the voice that calls Archie, Colin at the garden door, and what the Magic means. Full spoilers. The Secret Garden Ending Explained →

The Secret Garden summary, chapter by chapter, keeping Mary's count of the people she likes: the key, Dickon, Colin, the Magic and the ending. Full spoilers. The Secret Garden Summary: Chapter by Chapter →

Mary Lennox, a sour and neglected girl born in India, is sent to her uncle's huge house, Misselthwaite Manor, on a Yorkshire moor. There she learns of a garden locked for ten years, with its key buried. With the help of a robin, a maid named Martha and Martha's brother Dickon, she finds her way in.

The Project Gutenberg text, ebook number 113, has 27 chapters. By our count the chapter text is about 81,000 words, from chapter one to the last line.

Mary Lennox is the heroine. Around her are Martha and Dickon Sowerby, the old gardener Ben Weatherstaff and his robin, the housekeeper Mrs. Medlock, her uncle Archibald Craven, and her cousin Colin Craven, whom she meets in chapter thirteen.

The prose is plain, but much of the dialogue is in Yorkshire dialect. Tha' means you, wick means alive, and nowt o' th' soart means nothing of the sort. Most readers pick it up within a chapter or two.

It opens with cholera killing Mary's parents and servants. Mary and some other characters speak of Indian servants in ways that were common in the period and are offensive now. In the story, Mary has to unlearn that.

She finds the buried key at the end of chapter seven, and the hidden door at the end of chapter eight. From chapter nine on, the garden is at the center of the story.