This introduction provides an overview and brief history of New Thought and Christian Science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly not only in America but also in Britain and Canada. The introduction also describes how popular literature written for and about children circa 1900 helped spread New Thought ideas while simultaneously critiquing them. As I explain, New Thought proved especially popular with female novelists and readers seeking escape from domestic duties and greater opportunities outside of the domestic sphere. Finally, the introduction includes a chapter breakdown outlining which works and concepts will be discussed later in the book.

Chapter three discusses Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel The Secret Garden (1911) and her lesser-known work, The Dawn of a To-morrow (1906), as feminist, Christian Scientist responses to the rest cure. This cure, which was invented by Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell in the 1870s, involved bed rest, isolation, and force feeding. Burnett herself underwent at least three modified rest cures during her lifetime, but lasting relief of her symptoms eluded her. In The Secret Garden, child protagonist Mary Lennox stands in for charismatic leader Mary Baker Eddy, who died shortly after the serial version of The Secret Garden began its run in The American Magazine in November 1910. Mary Lennox heals her bedridden cousin Colin Craven by convincing him to abandon a regimen of enforced bed rest and social isolation. Colin’s father, Archibald Craven, is likewise healed of his depression when he sees the changes Mary has wrought in his son. By showing a young girl curing hysterical males, Burnett inverted the gender politics of the rest cure and contradicted its key principles.