Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel, A Little Princess, was first written as a serialized novella, Sara Crewe, or What Happened at Miss Minchin’s, and published in St. Nicholas Magazine, in 1888.It follows the story of Sara Crewe, a young girl whose mother died when she was a baby and who has been sent to a London boarding school during her father’s campaign in India.She has the finest clothes and toys and anything she wants but isn’t spoiled.She imagines herself as a princess and wants to be kind wise and just. She does good deeds as her way of "scattering largess to the population." This results in her being the social butterfly of the boarding school and earns her the animosity of its queen bee.All this changes in an instant when her father dies a tragic death in India. Miss Minchin, the school’s greedy headmistress, wastes no time in putting the now-penniless Sara to work for her room and board. To survive those hard times she imagines herself to be a little princess as she awaits her rescue from a mysterious benefactor.She works all day, sleeps in an unheated attic, and is underfed. She now imagines herself as a princess in disguise, and continues to try and do good deeds for anyone less fortunate.It is only through the friendship of two other girls, her own resolute nature, and some astonishing luck that Sara eventually finds her way back to happiness.