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 Marianne . . . But all this time you have not heard how I had three walks between College and St. John's house arm-in-arm with the Bishop! Don't you call that preferment?
We went to the Cathedral with the troop of Moberlys, and I am glad my first sight of him was in his lawn sleeves. I never saw a face of which one would so much say it was inspired. ... continue reading
My dear Mary I hope your Dynamite explosions will soon cease Are they through Sheepstor or through the wood above Hanover Green[?] Major Woollcombe and I have been mourning over them. He does not think the Auckland people are RCs. You remember one Lord Auckland was Bishop of the I of Man. A RC named Capes, who takes one of the houses on the Winchester Road and the village people say his rough ... continue reading
Dear Mr Bullock, I send you Charles Simeon You see he was entirely taught by the Church and nothing else, so far as his first beginnings of religion were concerned. He disowned being a Calvinist; but I think his mistake was in studying Huguenot sermons. I do not know if you will put the Simeonite preferments into a note. I thought some explanation was needful I daresay you may know one or other of his three ... continue reading
Dear Miss Yonge I am waiting till the printer sends the whole of what you have sent, in type, before any more detailed remarks or suggestions. I am sure I shall feel more clearly what its effect is when I see it in a larger mass. I am very hopeful both from what I have seen of it and from what you say.
I sent you Cawnpore, because it struck me as so noble in tone, thought ... continue reading