Alternative Family and Textual Citizenship in Frances Hodgson Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy: A Drama in Three Acts

When Frances Hodgson Burnett adapted Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) for the stage, she added texts to the play. A close reading of the texts created and distributed in Little Lord Fauntleroy: A Drama in Three Acts (1889) illuminates how Burnett perceived cooperative reading communities as essential to political engagement regardless of American or English citizenship. These reading communities, made up of characters typically considered outside of the traditional family—specifically, orphans, adoptees, widows, and bachelors—model familial-reading practices and create a political family through which the characters can attain more sociopolitical leverage than would otherwise be possible.