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...

Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Oct 19th [1864]

My dear Mr Macmillan, The Clever Woman of the Family as far as she goes will be sent you in a day or two from a friend who had had her to read.

The illustrations are decidedly not successful and I should not wish to perpetuate them. They are not half so good as what Miss Keary’s young cousin does.

There is about a fourth more of the story to come.

I have nearly finished the Golden Deeds, but ... continue reading

Otterbourne, Winchester.
March 21st 1860

My dear Miss Smith,

I have been so much taken up that I could not answer your letter sooner, and thank you for the way you have taken it. I am amused at the ordeal you are undergoing. I never met with anything like it, except once, when going with a cousin to luncheon with a connection of hers, she was addressed with ‘Anne, why could you have lent us Abbeychurch. Those games! And that mother!’ ... continue reading

Elderfield Otterbourne
March 1st 1875

Dear Mr Macmillan

Thank you, I shall be very glad to know approximately the value of those copy rights. I suppose they are worth far more to me than they would be to anyone else, and that if I wished to raise a sum of money, say £5000 or 6000, it would be better to use them as security, since the proceeds would enable me annually to pay off something than to attempt the sale of ... continue reading

Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
June 25th 1885
My dear Mrs Selwyn It is quite too good to be true that your son should come to take care of us, and that we should have you all here. There are so few left of your old set of special friends that perhaps you will accept a kind of shadow of them in me. I shall be at home all August and the treat would be exceeding. I should make the acquaintance ... continue reading