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Otterbourne, Winchester.
Easter Monday [9 April] 1860

MS Westcountry Studies Library, Exeter/ Yonge 1860/91

My dear Miss Smith

I am glad I know you are at home that I may send you not lost but found. I have, as you desired me, taken great liberties with the correction. I think that what I have chiefly to observe is that you have here and there made it obscure by elliptical writing, and that you must beware of now which comes very often over, and I used, by my home critic, to be forbidden to use at all, unless I mean the real present. Take care too that all your sentences have a nominative case and a verb or they won’t parse. I am very glad to have managed space for this while the interest is still keen, for as you know I am very fond of it, though (or because) it goes to one’s heart.

I rejoice to hear that Once a Week has appreciated the Two Beauties, and I hope it will not be as tardy in bringing it out as the Monthly Packet too often is except on an emergency. We are just going to have a grand reading over of the Wynnes. We have enjoyed them thoroughly chapter by chapter, but I have a kind of dread that altogether they will want a central thread of story, though I own regarding them as friends. I am relieved that you did not kill the mother and make Barbara keep house as once I expected. I wish we saw more of Elizabeth whom I greatly like. I believe a story should either be brief or have a good stout backbone of interest or else people will complain that they don’t see where it is tending

yours sincerely

C M Yonge

I suppose you would not put ‘by the author of Aggesden Vicarage’ to this.

Please send it at once to Messrs Mozley, Friar Gate, Derby not back to me

1Envelope addressed to Miss Ann Smith/ Old Charlton Rectory/ SE and postmarked Winchester (date missing because stamp cut out) and London SE 10 April 1860.
Cite this letter


The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge(1823-1901) edited by Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan and Helen Schinske.

URL to this Letter is: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/yonge/1788/to-ann-maria-carter-smith-34

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