At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.

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.