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...
Dear Mr Innes
Thanks for the cheque. I think it is a very good thing to cheapen Womankind, especially as it is getting a start through the Mothers’ Union taking it up. It will also be well to have New Ground at 2s Mr Scarth of the Waterside Mission is very anxious to have Friday’s Child published separately for the sake of the sailors. I believe Miss Crompton has been urged to write to you ... continue reading
My dear Mr Macmillan, I suppose the Trial ought to be stereotyped that it may stand on the same footing with the other books. In all the former cases I have been at the whole expense of printing, paper, binding &c, and have thus had all the profits, except the commission on the sales - I think the arrangement with regard to the Trial was that I was to receive £200 for 2,000 copies; I conclude ... continue reading
My dear Miss Curteis Your queries shall go in next time but is your Eagle & Goose story ready. If it is I should be thank [sic] to have it next week, as I am going from home, and I meant to get the number made complete before I go. I direct this to Leasams as Exmouth seems too large to find a stranger without further address.
I am dismayed to find that I have lost your ... continue reading
Next time I have to set down ‘Likes and Dislikes,’ I shall put a General Election as my chief antipathy.
I always fancied Hyères the most of these resorts, perhaps because my father was there to take charge of a consumptive cousin in 1816-17, and he used to talk of the sheets of big blue violets. He had been at Waterloo, and was with the army of occupation, and this cousin came out for the fashionable ... continue reading