I am trying to implement a new class inherited from List<string>, to load the contents from a text file to the items.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;


public class ListExt: List<string>
{
    string baseDirectory;

    public LoadFromFile(string FileName)
    {
        this._items = File.ReadAllLines(FileName).ToList();//does not work because _list is private
    }

}

but i dont knew how to load the lines into the _items property because is private.

any suggestions?