As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them. She liked it very much and when she looked into his funny face with the red cheeks and round blue eyes she forgot that she had felt shy.

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.