Frances Hodgson Burnett 
A Lady of Quality 

‘A Lady of Quality’ is a romance by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in 1896 that became the second highest-selling novel in the U.S. that year. If the name rings a bell, it’s because Burnett also wrote ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’, ‘A Little Princess’, and ‘The Secret Garden’. Today Burnett is remembered for her children’s books, but she also wrote a lot of romantic novels for adults, one of which is ‘A Lady of Quality’.



It is 1690, and another baby girl is born to Sir Jeoffrey Wildairs. Undismayed at the news of his wife’s death in childbirth, he packs the infant off to a remote wing of his stately home, where her two elder sisters live and has nothing whatsoever to do with them.

Unlike her plain, obedient sisters, Clorinda Wildairs becomes beautiful and highly intelligent, masterful and arrogant. When she comes of age, she changes overnight into an elegant temptress and naturally every man she meets falls in love with her. The novel eventually becomes an unlikely historical romance with murder at its heart…