A Little Princess

"A Little Princess" is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Seven-year-old Sara Crewe, a pupil at Miss Minchin’s London school, is left in poverty when her father dies. Miss Minchin turns Sara into a servant, requiring her to work without pay in exchange for food and a place to live. Far from being spoiled, Sara is a bright, imaginative, and empathetic child who loves books and storytelling. In short order she befriends even the most outcast of her fellow pupils, as well as the scullery maid Becky. For the next three years, Sara is overworked and half-starved. In her loneliness, she uses her imagination to comfort herself, turning her attic room into the Bastille and Becky into a fellow prisoner. The novella has been inspired in part by Charlotte Brontë's unfinished novel, Emma.