Talk:Frances Hodgson Burnett
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I was very disappointed by all the links that did not exist yet. That needs to be addressed and corrected by Wikipedia to maintain interest and credibility in your site. I would not send a student to this site at the present time.
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[edit] Death of her father
I'm just reading the secret garden and at the begin of the book, there is a little information about Frances. It says her father died in 1853, but this article says he died in 1865? I'm wondering what the right year is. I trust the book more, though. XKemical 12:41, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Removed from the article:
Project Gutenberg contains a large number of her works but not, it is clear from other online bibliographies, all of them. Notable (to me at least!) in particular is the absence of the novel Robin, a sequel to The Head of The House Of Coombe. This absence is particularly noticable because the final paragraph of The Head of The House Of Coombe tells us that the story continues in Robin. According to an online bibliography, Robin was published in 1922, as was The Head of The House Of Coombe and I consequently deduce that it, too, should be out of copyright and available for transformation into e-text. I would very willingly volunteer to start this transformation by scanning the novel and starting it in Project Gutenberg's catalogue, if only I had access to it! If you do have a copy you would be willing to lend me, please contact me, Jenny Radcliffe, and I'll send my address!
Racketty-Packetty House?
[edit] Classic Online link removal?
I noticed Pavlo Moloshtan posted a link to to a page for Frances Hodgson Burnett, then Mwanner deleted it, labeling the change "rv spam". I think that's a bit harsh. I checked the ClassicOnline.org page out -- like the other links for this author, it contains additional biographical information on Burnett not found in this article or in the other external sites linked in this article. It's a non-commercial site and Pavlo Moloshtan appears to have posted the link to be helpful to readers. It's certainly of no lesser value than than the other links in this article.
I also read the note left on Pavlo Moloshtan's talk page:
"See WP:EL. Wikipedia is not a link farm. Links should only be added if they have valuable information that does not belong in the article itself. If the information in the link does belong it the article, it should be re-written (to avoid copyright issues) and added to the article. In general, articles should have very few links, because very few links fit these criteria. The idea is that we want our articles to be the best possible source of information on a topic, not a short article followed by a long list of links to other articles-- one might as well just google the subject and read the first dozen sites if we are going to assemble long external link lists."
Whether or not this link should be in the article, I think it's harsh and unnecessary to delete a good-faith editing effort and label it "spam". It seems more polite (and better for the Wikipedia project) to thank the person for the link and then encourage them to add more information based on the link. At the same time, one could also genially get across the Wikipedia policy on external links. This approach seems in line with the general Wikipedia culture of encouraging other volunteers while continuing to improve the Wikipedia.
Is there something I'm missing here?--A. B. 18:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
- Actually, I'll answer my own question. I missed the fact that Pavlo owns Classic Online and only found out about it when I went to find out more information about the site and got the Whois report for the site. It looks like a good site, but I believe it's against Wikipedia policy (or guidelines) to link to your own site.--A. B. 19:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)
- Have you read WP:EL? Site owners are told not to add links to their own sites (see Links to normally avoid, #10), precisely to avoid situations like this one. Did you look at this editor's contributions? This is not a user trying to be helpful (at least, not to us)-- this is a user trying to build traffic to his own site by using Wikipedia's high traffic. Sure his site is non-commercial now-- the whole idea is to gain traffic so it's worth going commercial.
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- I admire your effort to assume good faith, but the work of spammers is not the place to start doing it. Think about it-- if this user worked on our articles instead of adding links to his own, the reader is way better off than he is if he has to read two very similar articles on the same subject. So who is he trying to help?
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- Finally, I'm a little worried about where Moloshtan got his material-- check out this sentence from his article on Kate Chopin: "Kate Chopin Home TodayThe house had fallen into a serious state of disrepair, when Mildred McCoy, a lifelong resident..."[1]. Kinda seems like he has copied it along with a subject heading ("Kate Chopin Home Today") from some other source.
[edit] First husband's name
I'm just curious--in the text, her first husband was cited as Dr. Donovan Brisk and later there was a mention of divorcing Dr. Burnett. Were they they same person? If not, at what point was Burnett added to her name? Mary-Theresa 21:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Reason for India?
Although I only really know of her from The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, is there any particular reason why Burnett gave them both connections to India? Did she ever travel there, or did she hear stories about India from a friend or family member? Or did she just have a random fascination with the country? Just a question I'd been wondering about for a while. Irish♣Pearl 20:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
- I always attributed it to the time period, with the British owning India at the time and more and more British people being born, living in, and writing about exotic, fanciful India. A few searches later, I cannot find anything about her traveling there, although I think it would be unlikely since she mainly ferried between the US and UK. It's always possible that she knew of someone who did visit there, of course, but who's to say? Very interesting question, though, and it definitely pertains to the writer's source of inspiration. I'll keep on the look-out. :) María (habla conmigo) 16:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Age at Mother's Death
The article says "Following the death of her mother in 1872, 18 year old Frances found herself the head of a family of four younger siblings". However, her birthdate is given at 1849, which would have made her about 23 if her mother died in 1872. Simhedges 16:26, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
