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...
My dear Anne- Graham and James Yonge went away before we were up this morning, and it would all have seemed like a dream if Duke had not been there at breakfast. Alice Moberly came out in the fly that fetched us, and spent the whole day with mamma; they gave the schools some buns and sugared negus by way of celebration, and I think mamma did very well.
I think we must have made a very ... continue reading
Dear Madam, I am at present in Devonshire whither your letter has followed me but not your MS. which awaits me at home.
I do not think it is easy to judge of a tale by one chapter, and I am not sure that it would not be best to bring your story to a conclusion, and then send me the whole. It is always dangerous to accept without seeing the whole. Perhaps therefore when the story ... continue reading
My dear Elizabeth I have been waiting till the wedding was over to write to you and should have done it before post time today but that Mrs Newland brought her children to a dancing lesson and came in here. I am afraid you did not get the fine day on SS Simon & Jude though I don’t think it was quite so bad as some. Gertrude was very bad the day you mentioned ... continue reading
My dear Cousin, I write a line at once in reply to a letter of January 29, for I see that a great sorrow is hanging over you, is perhaps already fallen on you, and I would fain say my word of sympathy, possibly of comfort.
One, perhaps, of the great blessings that a person in my position enjoys is that he must perforce see through the present gloom occasioned by loss of present companionship on to ... continue reading