Charlotte Yonge is one of the most influential and important of Victorian women writers; but study of her work has been handicapped by a tendency to patronise both her and her writing, by the vast number of her publications and by a shortage of information about her professional career. Scholars have had to depend mainly on the work of her first biographer, a loyal disciple, a situation which has long been felt to be unsatisfactory. We hope that this edition of her correspondence will provide for the first time a substantial foundation of facts for the study of her fiction, her historical and educational writing and her journalism, and help to illuminate her biography and also her significance in the cultural and religious history of the Victorian age.


Featured Letters...

Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Novr 23d [1864]

My dear Mr Moor Time vanished away suddenly from me yesterday, or I should not have missed thanking you for the division of the Income, which will be an excellent standard for the unpractical young ladies, some of whom I fear have been answering the question but I shall get theirs on the 25th

Mamma has been comparing your scale with our own, and finding we exactly agree in coals & wages and not at all in ... continue reading

Dear Miss Yonge,                                           I have received some copies of Dynevor Terrace. Shall I send them to you or to some place in Brighton? I can probably add a book or two of my own if you say the cause is worthy. I will anyway see about the Cameos very soon and also about Miss Peard. The ... continue reading
Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Feb 26th 1876

My dear Augusta

Certainly one is grateful to Miss Goodrich for being the cause of a letter. I have had a very long cold, chiefly irritation of the windpipe, which drove me away at last to Salisbury and Rownhams to get rid of it, and now it is nearly gone though I am still obliged to take more care than is convenient in the beginning of Lent. I had some very pleasant days last week ... continue reading

Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester
March 13th 1867
Sir, I am afraid you will think your kind mention of the Little Duke in your history of the Norman Conquest has brought on you an infliction - But I cannot resist the desire to send you my later story the Prince and the Page because in it I have tried as far as the scope of the story would allow, to do justice to the character of Simon de Montfort and Edward I. I am aware ... continue reading