Little Lord Fauntleroy

Little Lord Fauntleroy Review

Frances Hodgson Burnett published Little Lord Fauntleroy in serialised form in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1885 and 1886, and its book publication made her an immediate celebrity. The velvet suit and long curls worn by its hero became a fashion phenomenon that tormented a generation of small boys. The novel itself is considerably more interesting than its cultural afterlife suggests.

Cedric Errol is seven years old when he learns that his father — an English nobleman who had been disinherited for marrying an American — has died, and that he is now Lord Fauntleroy, heir to the Earl of Dorincourt. Cedric’s American upbringing has given him something the English aristocracy had not cultivated in itself: genuine warmth, democratic instinct, and unself-conscious affection for everyone he meets, regardless of station. He has no idea that lords are supposed to be aloof.

The novel’s structural engine is the relationship between Cedric and his grandfather, who is initially everything the boy is not — cold, proud, indifferent to others’ suffering, governing his estate with the habits of a man who has never had to consider whether he is kind. Cedric’s unselfconscious affection for the old man — he simply assumes his grandfather must be wonderful, because why else would everyone speak so carefully around him — begins the transformation. Burnett is astute enough to show the Earl’s thaw as gradual and self-interested at first: he wants an heir he can be proud of, and Cedric is unexpectedly impressive.

What elevates the book above its reputation for cloying sentimentality is Burnett’s consistent attention to how goodness actually works in the world — not as naivety, but as a kind of strategic innocence that refuses to acknowledge barriers that everyone else treats as insurmountable. Cedric is not stupid; he simply doesn’t believe in the walls adults have built. The novel’s ending, in which the Earl’s transformation is tested and confirmed, is more satisfying than critics who dismiss the book as simple wish-fulfilment tend to acknowledge.

Our rating: 3.9/5

The Book Behind the Costume

Little Lord Fauntleroy is now remembered, when it is remembered at all, for the velvet suit and lace collar that its illustrations inflicted on a generation of small boys — a fashion craze that long outlived any memory of the story itself. This is unfortunate, because the novel that launched Burnett’s celebrity in 1886 is considerably more interesting than its cultural afterlife. Serialised first in St. Nicholas Magazine, it made its author famous and established the template — the good-hearted child who transforms the adults around them — that she would refine across the rest of her career.

Strategic Innocence

What saves Cedric Errol from being merely insufferable is the specific quality of his goodness. He is not pious or preachy; he is simply unable to imagine that anyone might wish him ill, and that incapacity becomes a kind of power. Burnett’s genuine insight is that Cedric’s innocence functions strategically: he refuses to acknowledge the barriers that everyone else treats as fixed. He assumes his cold, proud grandfather must be admirable, because why else would people speak so carefully around him, and the assumption begins to make itself true. Cedric is not stupid — he is the opposite of cynical, and Burnett understands that uncynical confidence can disarm defences that argument never could. This is wish-fulfilment, certainly, but it is wish-fulfilment with an idea inside it: that goodness which declines to recognise hostility can sometimes dissolve it.

The Earl’s Thaw

The novel’s real engine is the relationship between Cedric and the Earl of Dorincourt, and Burnett is shrewder about it than her reputation for sentimentality suggests. The Earl does not soften all at once, and his early interest in his grandson is frankly self-interested: he wants an heir he can be proud of, and Cedric is unexpectedly presentable. Only gradually does calculation give way to genuine affection. Burnett lets the transformation proceed by degrees, and she keeps it grounded in the Earl’s pride rather than pretending he undergoes some sudden conversion. The thaw is the more convincing for being slow and partly grudging.

Two Nations

Underneath the central relationship runs a transatlantic comedy of manners. Cedric’s American upbringing has given him a democratic warmth and an unselfconscious friendliness toward everyone regardless of station — qualities the English aristocracy had bred out of itself. Burnett, an Englishwoman who had emigrated to America, handles the contrast with wit and without taking sides too crudely: American openness is charming but naive about rank; English reserve is dignified but starved of feeling. Cedric, belonging fully to neither world, becomes the medium through which each corrects the other.

The Limits and the Charm

The case against the book is real. Cedric is so unfailingly good that he can feel less like a child than an instrument, and readers who prefer protagonists with flaws will find little purchase. The sentimentality is laid on thickly enough to repel anyone seeking psychological complexity. Yet the ending — in which the Earl’s transformation is tested by a challenge to Cedric’s claim and confirmed by his refusal to revert to his old coldness — is more earned than the book’s detractors allow. Little Lord Fauntleroy is a minor work beside The Secret Garden, but it is a warmer and more intelligent one than its costume-drama reputation would suggest, and it shows Burnett already in command of the theme — goodness as a transforming force — that would carry her best fiction.