The Head of the House of Coombe Books in Order

The Coombe books, The Head of the House of Coombe and its sequel Robin, shift Burnett's eye from gardens and fairy tales to Edwardian drawing rooms and a Europe sliding toward war. They are family dramas, but they are also sharp commentaries on class and politics.

Lord Coombe is the figure everyone talks about in whispers: perfectly dressed, faintly sinister, and powerful in ways that never quite reach the newspapers. When he drifts into the life of a feather light society beauty nicknamed Feather, he seems at first another corrupt man in a corrupt circle.

Feather's small daughter, Robin, hardly registers on anyone's list of concerns. She grows up neglected in the nursery, half invisible in her own home. What neither she nor the gossiping world sees clearly is that Coombe, for his own complicated reasons, takes quiet responsibility for her safety and education, even while she learns to fear and hate him.

Around this triangle moves a larger cast: a shrewd old duchess, a sensitive boy named Donal, servants with their own loyalties, and a crowd of idle or predatory visitors from other European courts. The first novel follows their overlapping lives through the glittering years just before 1914, hinting that the games they play are part of a much larger pattern.

In Robin the focus tilts toward the young woman Robin becomes and the choices she makes as the world she knows breaks apart. Love, war service, and the shock of real loss test everything she has been taught to believe about herself, about Coombe, and about England itself.

Readers who come to these books from A Little Princess or The Secret Garden will recognize Burnett's interest in neglected children and hard won transformations. Here, though, the tone is darker and more overtly political. The Coombe duet suits anyone curious about how she imagined privilege, responsibility, and conscience once the safe edges of childhood fell away.