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 Miss Yonge The parcel for Miss Lewis reached Tooting safely, and will not in the least inconvenience me. I will endeavour to deliver it early after my arrival.
I have read the Story of the Scotch girl. It is very interesting - rather sensational in fact. Robespierre, Danton, Napoleon, the Guillotine 'La Lanterne,' a sprinkling of smugglers with a slight dash of wreckers, highly toned Irish, Scotch, French nationalities, a mad woman, suicide, a murder or ... continue reading
My dear Christabel I hope you did get my letter of thanks to Goosedom after all, though I was so stupid as not to direct it to you at your friend’s, it was a stupid letter in itself, but I was very much hurried at the time, and could not even write to you with it and since that I have been quite laid up, though I am promised that the result is to be getting ... continue reading
Sir I am afraid you must tell me again of what poems you want to know the authorship. I am from home and I destroyed your letter, but all I remember seeing on the list you sent me were from the Lyra Innocentium, and were Mr Keble’s I return home on the 5th, but if you write sooner my address is Tyntesfield, Bristol
yours truly C M Yonge
... continue readingDear Madam
I wish I could promise a ready admittance to My English Servant into the Monthly Packet, but I am afraid that sending it to me would only involve an almost endless waiting. Some stories I have had by me for two years, and I think yours deserves a better fate, I wish the SPCK would take it, I can’t understand their principles, for I am sure there are two or three stories in ... continue reading