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.
[26 September 1874]

My dear Miss Palmer Here is Itys upon his copperplate. As far as I can judge he seems to me good though I would rather have had him standing - he is certainly free from Pan’s legs. You had better return him direct to Mr Cowie, 6 Paternoster Row; E C.

I am ashamed to find that my night cap stayed behind me - thank you for sending it to me - also the heath - of ... continue reading

Elderfield
May 21st [1886]

Dear Mr Craik

Thank you for your kind letter, I do see great advantages in the plan - but I confess I think it not possible to have such a book well and originally illustrated at such a price in any other way.

The doubt in my mind is whether the book would not - (to fulfil its purpose) have to be too common place in its facts to be on a level with the [[other:68]E. ... continue reading

[Puslinch]
[September 1859]
[To Elizabeth Barnett

It is nine years since I had been here. . . . All is much the same, and the ways of the house, sounds and sights, walks and church-going, are all unaltered. And there is all the exceeding pleasure of the old terms, the playful half teasing and scolding, and being set down for nonsense, and oh, above all, Uncle Yonge - having more of the father to me than ... continue reading

Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
March 31st 1817 [1871]
My dear Miss Sewell, Could you be so kind as first to send on a card the name of anyone to write to at Freshwater about lodgings for a fortnight or so, or if that great Alum bay hotel is thought well of. Mrs Elgie wants a little airing after her winter of illness, and I fancy Bonchurch would be too relaxing for her, but if there are any lodgings anywhere you specially recommend it would ... continue reading