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    Little Lord Fauntleroy
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    Little Lord Fauntleroy
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    Little Lord Fauntleroy
    Ebook207 pages2 hours

    Little Lord Fauntleroy

    By Frances Hodgson Burnett

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    In a shabby New York side street in the mid-1880s, young American Cedric Errol lives with his mother in genteel poverty after his father, Captain Errol dies. They receive a visit from Havisham, an English lawyer with a message from young Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt. With the deaths of his father's elder brothers, Cedric is now Lord Fauntleroy and heir to the Earldom and a vast estate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateNov 1, 2012
    ISBN9781625580559
    Author

    Frances Hodgson Burnett

    Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) was born in Manchester and spent her early years there with her family. Her father died in 1852, and eventually, in 1865, Frances emigrated to the United States with her mother and siblings, settling with family in Knoxville, Tennessee. Frances began to be published at the age of nineteen, submitting short stories to magazines and using the proceeds to help support the family. In 1872, she married Swan Burnett, a doctor, with whom she had two sons while living in Paris. Her first novel, That Lass o'Lowrie's, was published in 1877, while the Burnetts were living in Washington D. C. Following a separation from her husband, Burnett lived on both sides of the Atlantic, eventually marrying for a second time, however she never truly recovered from the death of her first son, Lionel. Best known during her lifetime for Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), her books for children, including The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, have endured as classics, but Burnett also wrote many other novels for adults, which were hugely popular and favourably compared to authors such as George Eliot.

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    Reviews for Little Lord Fauntleroy

    3.5/5

    337 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett; (5*)This was a sweet little story that speaks of the power of kindness, generosity and friendship. Cedric, our Little Lord Fauntleroy, is such an endearing character, so wise for such a young child. He is a perfect little angel of a lad. He's handsome, kind and caring. The reader cannot help but to adore this little guy. When he came into his fortune he was told by his grandfather's 'man' that he could have anything he wanted. Most little boys would want a race car or a spaceship or something else totally selfish but not our little guy. He only wanted money to help the poor and the needy. The Earl, his grandfather, was your stereotypical stone faced, heartless lord who has never loved anyone but himself and his now deceased younger son. But then he meets this grandson who is impossible not to adore. Cedric's innocent love for his grandfather breaks open the veneer of his stony old heart and makes an impact on the old soul, changing his life and consequently the lives of those who live under him.Another wonderful story by this gifted and beloved author.
    • 4/5
      A character that I've constantly seen referenced but had never read. It is definitely a product of its time; slow to start and with an extremely dry wit that still caused my family to laugh out loud on several occasions (we read it aloud in the car). One of the funniest lines wasn't in the novel proper but in the authors biography "Her (Burnett's) adult novels are of a sentimental vein which is now thoroughly out of fashion."

      The language is a bit repetitive - the Earl's smile is almost always 'grim', and an alarming number of things are either 'gay' or 'queer'. This, combined with the earnestness that the lines are delivered with lead to my constantly appending the phrase "He said with a leering wink" to the end of sentences. At least until the children caught on and the 10-year old asked "What's a leering wink?" Regardless, doing so makes the book exponentially funnier, if a bit off-putting since the titular character is 7 years old.
    • 3/5
      Such a sweet, sweet story. I am very late in life to be reading FHB but better late than never!
    • 5/5
      I am always at something of a loss to explain my abiding love for Little Lord Fauntleroy, which must be included, along with The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, among the author's better known works. Extremely sentimental, with a somewhat more moralistic tone than that found in Burnett's other two classics, it features a child protagonist so angelically good that children everywhere might be forgiven for hating him.But despite its Victorian trappings - complete with English aristocrats, estranged and disinherited sons, long-lost (not to mention fake) heirs, and the inevitable triumph of the moral and "well-bred" over the deceitful and vulgar - Little Lord Fauntleroy is at heart a satisfying tale of family reconciliation, and the transformative power of love. Cedric Errol, the cheerful, good-hearted young hero of the tale, is able to bridge the differences, not just between the generations, but between the nations.Burnett herself was something of a bridge, born and raised in England, but living most of her adult life in America, and her familiarity with both cultures must have stood her in good stead while writing this tale of a crusty English aristocrat and his American heir. This may also account, in part, for my pleasure in the story, for at a time when few English children's authors had anything good to say about Americans (if they had anything to say at all), Burnett created a lovable character whose virtues - from the ease with which he converses with adults, to his democratic kindness and concern for all - were distinctly alien to British notions of childhood.
    • 2/5
      Today I picked up a very cheap copy at a book stall. I didn't mean to go and re-read it right now, but it seems I'm doing it =) Not as good as I remembered, but still not bad.
    • 4/5
      Little Lord Fauntleroy is a sweet tale about a father-less, American boy named Cedric who finds himself the heir to an English earldom. The story is sorta in the vein of other classic books, like Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, Pollyanna, and Rebecca of Sunnybrooke farm, in which a sweet, innocent child generally makes people happy. By the end of the story grumpy people are made kind and ungrumpy. I guess you'd say Little Lord Fauntleroy is the male character take on that storyline. Also, Little Lord Fauntleroy (Cedric) is the anti-Tom Sawyer, because Fauntleroy is the perfect, gentleman child.

      Four stars because the plot is pretty straight-forward. No shocks or surprises. However, the story is very enduring. Just a sweet, comforting little read about a cute little boy doing nice things.

      On a personal note, while I enjoyed the story, I hate the title. The name Fauntleroy reminds me of Ben Stiller's character in "Meet the Parents" or Prince Humperdinck from "The Princess Bride." I wish Burnett had titled it "something something Cedric" for the character's real name.
    • 3/5
      This is a book about virtue. It would be a fun read aloud for the grands.
    • 5/5
      The story is about a boy called Cedric, who lives with his mother in a fairly run-down New York neighbourhood in the late 1800s. He is a lovable child, who has a knack of making friends with people of all ages: from the local grocer to a bootblack who struggles to make ends meet. One day, a lawyer arrives from the UK, giving some news that changes their lives forever. Much of the book describes Cedric's gradual adaptation to a very different kind of life, and also the thawing of a crusty old man. It’s a children’s book, which paints a good picture of the contrast between aristocratic homes in England and the poorer parts of New York. The author was clearly comfortable in both cultures, and shows how different the two countries were, even 130 years ago. Well worth reading for anyone - child or adult - who likes this era of fiction. I re-read it in about three hours, and it made an excellent distraction from an otherwise rather boring flight.
    • 3/5
      Little Lord Fauntleroy is a set book for my children's lit course, I think. It's the second book I've read by Frances Hodgson Burnett -- although I own A Little Princess too, and plan to read it soon. They all seem to start the same way, describing the child and then having a sudden change in circumstances, especially location (e.g. India to Yorkshire, America to , usually due to the death of a parent. In The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy, there is some kind of amazing change in circumstance due to love or friendship -- in The Secret Garden, both Mary and Colin are changed, as well as Colin's father; in Little Lord Fauntleroy, the old Earl is changed while Little Lord Fauntleroy himself stays more or less the same throughout.

      I'm sure I would have liked it more when I was younger. I suspect when I go back to The Secret Garden, I'll still find some of the old magic in it. But I'm a little too grown up and cynical for the simplicity of the journey through this book. It's interesting, though, to think about what kind of children's book it is, what kind of things the author had in mind. Sentimentality, evidently, and a story that can interest a child in it, but still moralising throughout -- it's not as overt as some books for children, but it's there. "Literature should improve your mind" kinda thinking.
    • 5/5
      The third son of the Earl of Dorincourt, Cedric Errol, is disowned by his widower father because he marries an American. The couple have a child; Cedric Sr. dies in an influenza epidemic; both of the Earl’s older sons die – and, guess what? – the American boy Cedric inherits the title. His grandfather has him brought to England to groom him for the position.Cedric is a paragon of beauty and virtue but, even though I tried, I couldn’t dislike him. “He was always lovable because he was simple and loving. To be so is like being born a king.”What a wonderful children’s story this is – and I’m so very sorry that I missed it a s a child. 4½ starsRead this if: you have a child to share it with (oh, do introduce him or her to Cedric!); you’d like a child’s view of the world of Downton Abbey; or if you value classics.
    • 2/5
      A 'handsome little boy' with 'golden curls' is the son of a exiled Captain and an American woman, who has been living in reduced circumstances, when he discovers that he is, in fact, Lord Fauntleroy, and will one day be Earl of Darincourt in place of his grandfather.So he must go to England, where the grumpy and bitter old man waits, and leave behind all his 'common' friends. But before he does, he solves all their problems.And so the sickly sweetness begins. The boy is obviously perfect, not scarred by either the loss of his father or having played with the lower classes of New York, and at the same time can't possibly be spoilt by the money and decadence afforded to him. The Earl keeps his mother 'Dearest' from him, and yet he is still happy. He charms all who meet him. The mother is perfect as well. And the Earl? Well, surely he has to become perfect in the halo of this 'handsome little face'.I only made it through this because it was the only audiobook I had at the moment, and I needed some sound! There are about a thousand too many mentions of Cedric's 'strong, lithe, graceful little body' and 'lordly little red legs', not to mention his mother's 'sweet young voice'. It was so bad that if I'd rolled my eyes every time I heard some phrase like this, I would have appeared drunk very quickly. This book's descriptions must be a paedophile's ideal. The basic plot is highly predictable, the characters one dimensional (apart from the Earl, who at least starts off being interestingly bitter and miserable) and at the end I wanted to throttle the whole lot of them.Perhaps I am just a cynic. In fact, I know I am. And this pushed me nearly over the edge.
    • 4/5
      Cedric is a good boy,and live with his mother.But his grandfather Earl don't like his mother because she is American.Cedric lives with his grandfather who is cool.But he become gentleman because of Cedric..It is very heartful story.Story is a little long but very interesting.Cedric is so good boy.And Earl become good,so it is please for me.
    • 4/5
      Summary: Cedric Errol was for the most part a normal seven-year-old boy. His British father died when he was young, but his American mother and he live a happy, comfortable life together. One day, a lawyer arrives from Britain with some startling news: Cedric's uncles (whom he's never met) are dead, which leaves Cedric as Lord Fauntleroy, and standing to inherit an Earldom. His grandfather, the current Earl, is a nasty, cantankerous, selfish old man, who is still upset about Cedric's father marrying an American. The Earl sends for Cedric to come live with him in England, not for the boy's benefit, but for his own sense of pride. Cedric has been brought up to be unfailingly good, kind, and trusting, but how will such an innocent fare when given the privilege and power of nobility?Review: Well, color me misinformed. For some reason I had in my head that to be called "a little Lord Fauntleroy" was a disparagement, meaning you were acting like a spoiled brat. Turns out, the reality is pretty much the exact opposite. Cedric is almost preternaturally wonderful: kind, cheerful, giving, attractive, selfless, strong, trusting, and only ever seeing the best in people. He's essentially a male version of Sara Crewe from A Little Princess, but even more wonderful; even Sara was allowed one fit of temper. Cedric's extreme naiveté actually makes it somewhat hard to believe him as seven-year-old; in some places, four or five would have seemed to be a better fit. Regardless, this book - and Cedric himself - did charm me. Similarly to A Little Princess, the story is mostly one of the magic that being a good person can work in the world, and as morals go, that's not a bad one. My only real complaint is that Burnett transcribed her dialogue pretty literally, and gave all of her servants and rural people such thick country accents that some of their lines were almost unreadable. Apart from that, though, it's a sweet little story, predictable as all get out, of course, but not overly facile in its resolutions. Not quite as engaging as A Little Princess or The Secret Garden, but a charming little book all the same. 3.5 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: Best for fans of Burnett's other books, or British children's lit in general.
    • 4/5
      This is a simple plot similar to Pollyanna only the main character is a boy. I loved this book for its depiction of what a child can be like; how each of us impacts for the better or the worse those we come into daily contact with. My eight year old daughter will love this book. I have added it to her reading selection for the coming school year.
    • 4/5
      It's soppy and sentimental and idealises childhood in a totally unrealistic manner - and I still love it! Sometimes, it's nice to be able to suspend disbelief and decide that crusty old men can be indeed be won around by childish love, innocence and good manners.
    • 5/5
      When I was little, two of my favorite books were A Little Princess and The Secret Garden (HarperClassics) by Frances Hodgson Burnett. When I grew up, they were still favorites. So a year ago when I was buying them for my little cousin, and I noticed "Little Lord Fauntleroy", I was astounded. How did I miss such a gem? The story of little Cedric who warms his old grandfather's heart is beautifully written and quite touching. There is also a lesson to be learned, as we watch what Cedric does with his newfound wealth. What would you do if you were suddenly gifted with such a fortune? This story is perfect for anyone who enjoyed "A Little Princess" or "The Secret Garden"!
    • 5/5
      One of my favourite children's books ever. Fauntleroy is a young, American boy whose gentle mother allows him to be taken from her when he becomes the heir to a massive English fortune. His delightful, loving personality wins over his incredibly cranky grandfather and eventually reunites his family.