A Little Princess

Sara Crewe arrives at Miss Minchin's London boarding school as its wealthiest pupil, the pampered daughter of a father serving in India. Imaginative and generous, she wins the affection of the other girls and the resentment of Miss Minchin, who tolerates Sara's willfulness only because of her father's money.

When word arrives that her father has died penniless, Sara is stripped of her privileges overnight and put to work as a servant in the same school where she was once a star pupil, sleeping in a bare attic and surviving Miss Minchin's petty cruelty and near-starvation. She clings to her sense of self by imagining herself a princess in disguise, and small kindnesses from an ailing neighbor and a loyal servant girl sustain her through the worst of it, building toward a reversal of fortune.

Frances Hodgson Burnett expanded the book from an earlier story and play, publishing the full novel in 1905. It shares its author's recurring interest, seen also in The Secret Garden, in children whose inner resilience outlasts their circumstances.