Burnett's transatlantic literary interests have been visible in her work as early as Haworth’s (1879), and, as documented in Chapter I of this volume, in A Fair Barbarian that interest was central to the plot of the American girl's rejuvenating disruption of an English village. With the publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), however, which came out during Burnett's silence as a novelist between Through One Administration (1883) and A Lady of Quality (1896), Burnett's transatlantic engagement took on heightened importance for herself as a writer and for her readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Although the contemporary reviews were enthusiastic, Little Lord Fauntleroy as a novel for children and as a character did not age well. The American reviewer for The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature in November of 1886 begins by claiming that Burnett’s “juvenile story adds another laurel to a lady who as worthily won high honors in more serious and pretentious fiction.” In addressing the aesthetic merit of the tale, the reviewer notes that “[T] he story is charmingly told, and none but a practiced literary artist, whose sympathies, too, were deeply in her work, could have used her material with such simple, yet telling, effect.” Such commentary captures both Burnett's status as a novelist while gently suggesting a shift in her cultural visibility toward children's literature. Fauntleroy, the reviewer concludes,

To capture the quality of that “delight” we can turn to the review written by Louisa May Alcott, which closes with this eulogy to the power of Burnett's tale and those written by other women who possess “the tender wisdom of motherly hearts”: “Let us hope that these delightful stories may be multiplied rapidly, for they do the old as much good as the young, and refresh tired eyes and anxious minds like spring air and a glimpse of green grass and daisies after city streets and the dull rooms where daily work goes on.”