A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Told for the First Time

When Sara Crewe arrives at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary, she is already a princess in all but name: rich, beloved, and draped in velvet and diamonds. Her father adores her, her imagination is vivid, and she speaks with a wisdom beyond her seven years. Then comes the telegram that destroys everything. Her father is dead. The fortune is gone. Sara is thrust into the attic, a servant now, cold and hungry, subjected to the petty cruelties of her mentor turned tormentor. Yet she refuses to surrender. If she cannot be a princess by birth, she will be one by act of will: kind whencruelty is easier, imaginative when reality is unbearable, dignified when everything has been taken. This is the radical heart of Burnett's masterpiece: a story that insists the inner life cannot be stolen, that imagination itself is a form of resistance. The book that generations of readers have returned to knows exactly what it is offering: a fairy tale with teeth, a testament to the stubborn grace of a child who decides who she is rather than allowing the world to decide for her.