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 Isabella Lucy Wilcox?
Elderfield Otterbourne Winchester
March 25th [1893]
My dear Miss Wilcox Fisher Unwin has sent me this letter asking me to forward it, and as you are the only person I know likely to be able to do so, I send it on to you, taking the opportunity at the same time of returning your book which has been most useful to me, I kept it so long because I found I had to lengthen out Grisly Grisell and I wanted to refer ... continue reading
To Anna Meredith Barrett Lennard
Elderfield Otterbourne
Aug 14 1900

Dear Mrs Lennard I did not write because I knew of no one who would respond to your plan, Are you going back to your old quarters?

I do not know Mr Arnold’s address. My nephew saw him at Lowestoft, where he was going to open an hotel! He has married a cousin of his wife’s

Miss Finlaison is at Preston for her holidays with her nieces, the Jenners, whose mother died this spring. They are in the ... continue reading

To the Reverend Orby Shipley
Elderfield
Decr 29th 1865

My dear Mr Shipley, I am afraid that such an awful subject would not suit with anything so light as the Monthly Packet, and that I had therefore better return it which I will do the next time I send into Winchester, I send you the prospectus of a cheap missionary magazine, which Miss Mackenzie hopes to make very interesting

Yours sincerely C M Yonge

[In different handwriting on the second half of the sheet]

Dear Mr Bramley I am very ... continue reading

To Mary Yonge
Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Sept 28th 1885

My dear Mary

Thank you for the sight of the photographs Julian says the iron work is meant to cover it. It is very beautiful but I am afraid I do not like the idea of the Dove. It seems to me going beyond the lawful symbol, and I am sorry for it, though of course I have heard of such before, but not I think very frequently. I do not think ... continue reading