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...
Dear Mr.Maddison How shall I thank you enough for writing to me much that I might never have known, though Miss Barnett promises to send me some of the letters she has had. Poor thing, the tower of strength is gone, and she has lived in and for those two so long that I cannot think that her frail body will stand such a shock. I am glad you told me that she does ... continue reading
My dear Christabel
You must take care about the law of the thing for if Alvar has been subpoenad as a witness Cherry’s appearing would not save him from a terrible scrape. It could be only at the examination before a magistrate at first. The Spanish indifference to doing good to one’s neighbour might come out well I wonder whether he ever could come to be good for much I should like ... continue reading
My dear Cobweb, I should not have bothered you about your questions this month but that Chelsea China told me that your Mother was so much better that she thought you would be able to do them or rather ask them- and as it is so we shall get the order of things right again.
I think the two questions that will make the most variety would be the history of the Knights’ [sic] Templars and the ... continue reading
My dear Mrs Elgie
I send the gathering here for the Altar Cloth. I hear this morning that Mr Harrison has not promised Crookham to anyone about whom the inhabitants have written, so it might be worth while to apply to him now, though I doubt it and I quite see all your reasons for wishing for a change. It is a great misfortune that Otterbourne is not an incumbency as it prevents the ... continue reading