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...

To Ann Maria Carter Smith
Decr 7th 1857

My dear Miss Smith It is very odd to send the money in two orders, but when I sent on Saturday the Post Office or I contrived to make a blunder, and the Order arrived for less than your due, so I am afraid you must have the trouble of signing both of these. £1.19 is for the Royal Household, with many thanks, and I have ventured to add a pound for your district if ... continue reading

To Catharine Elgie
[1874?]

My dear Mrs Elgie

I send the gathering here for the Altar Cloth. I hear this morning that Mr Harrison has not promised Crookham to anyone about whom the inhabitants have written, so it might be worth while to apply to him now, though I doubt it and I quite see all your reasons for wishing for a change. It is a great misfortune that Otterbourne is not an incumbency as it prevents the ... continue reading

To Elizabeth Barnett
Elderfield
November 19, 1887
My dear Lizzie I trust you will neither find London in a riot or in a fog! I came through it yesterday, and could not see sixpences from half-sovereigns till I was over Waterloo Bridge, when it became less dense. I was coming from Hatfield, where I have had three very pleasant days, but the first was so beset with fog that I could not see nearly as much of the outside as I could have wished, ... continue reading
To Jemima Blackburn
Otterbourn
May 26th [1854]

My dear Mrs Blackburn Many thanks for your photograph which I am very glad to possess, as it is pleasant to have more than a visionary notion what one is writing to.

I cannot find any authority for Tom Thumb’s father being a miller, in one of your books he is a ploughman in the other a woodman, and in Grimm a peasant, so as he seemed to be quite well to do, with a cow ... continue reading