Market, Tennessee. Young Frances falls in love with Tennessee’s backcountry. When not exploring the natural world, she reads and writes stories, testing them on her friends and family. She takes a job teaching school, for which she is paid in food. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is published.

1868 In the wake of the Civil War, the family has barely enough money to make ends meet. Frances discovers her love of writing and attempts to help by selling her stories. Godey’s Lady’s Book, a popular women’s magazine, publishes “Miss Carruthers’ Engagement” and “Hearts and Diamonds,” launching Frances’s literary career; she will write more than fifty books

and numerous dramatizations of her fiction. Louisa May Alcott publishes Little Women.

1869 The family moves to a small house in Knoxville, Tennessee.

1870 Eliza Hodgson dies. Frances continues to support the family by publishing stories.

1871 A British Act of Parliament legalizes labor unions.

1872 A story, “Surly Tim’s Troubles,” is published by Scribner’s Monthly, which will issue more of Frances’s writing than any other magazine. A young local doctor, Swan Burnett, falls in love with Frances. When he proposes marriage, she somewhat apprehensively accepts, fearing he’ll be devastated if she refuses. Her feelings about marriage remain ambivalent. George Eliot’s Middlemarch is published.

1873 A first full-length work, Dolly, is serialized in Peterson’s magazine . Swan and Frances marry in Tennessee and honeymoon in New York, where Frances also meets with publishers.

1874 A son, Lionel, is born. Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is published anonymously.

1875 Burnett enters into a lucrative writing contract that permits the family to live in Paris while her husband studies medicine. In addition to raising Lionel, Frances writes full-time. She is remarkably productive, but the experience exhausts her. Despite the fact that Congress passes a Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in places of public accommodation, the first law enforcing segregation on trains is passed in Tennessee, and segregation laws multiply throughout the South.

1876 A second son, Vivian, is born in France. The family returns to Tennessee, where Frances raises the children and writes, while Swan moves to Washington, D.C., to begin his eye-and-ear medical practice. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer appears . Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.

1877 The family joins Swan in the capital. Frances enters a period of intense work, creativity, and output. Her fame and earnings steadily increase, making her the breadwinner of the family. Burnett’s first novel, about Lancashire mining culture, That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, is published, as is Surly Tim, and Other Stories. Henry James’s The American is published. Queen Victoria is proclaimed empress of India.

1879 Haworth’s is published. In order to protect its copyright and royalties in England, Frances travels to Canada to fulfill the legal requirement of standing on the soil of a British dominion on the day of the British publication. Burnett forges friendships with contemporary writers Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott.

1880 Louisiana is published.

1881 A Fair Barbarian is published. Esmerelda, a play written with actor/dramatist William Gillette, is produced in New York. President James Garfield takes office, and Frances, Swan, and the boys socialize at the White House.

1883 Burnett publishes the novel Through One Administration, a revealing reflection of her Washington, D.C., social life and her unhappy marriage. Critics compare her writing to that of Henry James for its portrayal of contradictions in human nature. Constantly traveling on work-related business, Frances is often on the verge of nervous exhaustion. Although she does not reveal her problems, her marriage begins to suffer. The Supreme Court overturns the Civil Rights Act.

1884 Burnett begins traveling more frequently to Britain and Europe , spending long periods away from her family. Her relationship with Swan begins to dissolve; she is torn between being a good mother and living independently of her children and husband. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appears.

1885 Little Lord Fauntleroy is serialized in the magazine St. Nicholas. Its tale of a young American boy who discovers he is an English lord causes a literary sensation akin to that of today’s Harry Potter books. Mothers begin having their sons wear long curly hair and velvet suits to look like Fauntleroy. Frances dresses her own son Vivian, the inspiration for the character, in dandyish garb. She falls ill and receives treatment from a mind healer in Boston.

1886 Little Lord Fauntleroy is published in book form and becomes a runaway best-seller in America and Europe. Burnett grows wealthy from the sales of her books and indulges a passion for