A Little Princess

Sara Crewe arrives at Miss Minchin’s fashionable London seminary as the adored daughter of a wealthy officer, given her own rooms and treated like the little princess of the title. When her father dies in India and his fortune collapses, she loses everything overnight and is put to work as a half-starved servant, sleeping in a cold attic. What sustains her is imagination and a quiet conviction that real nobility means staying kind when no one is watching. Frances Hodgson Burnett sets Miss Minchin’s cruelty against small, almost magical acts of generosity, building toward a reversal that has moved young readers since 1905. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.