How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.

She filled the house with guests and had Stephen Townsend move in with her which the local vicar considered a scandal. The central character Cedric was modeled on Burnett's younger son Vivian and the autobiographical aspects of Little Lord Fauntleroy occasionally led to disparaging remarks from the press. Also during that year Frances Hodgson Burnett began work on her first full length novel That Lass o' Lowries set in Lancashire.

Beginning in the 1880s Frances Hodgson Burnett began to travel to England frequently and bought a home there in the 1890s where Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote The Secret Garden. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess.