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...
My dear Miss Thackeray Did you have a silver gilt button for fastening a glove the day you were here? We found one the next morning but as we had some visitors after you. We waited to ask them, and one of them was gone away, and could not be applied to.
I conclude you are still in your old home, and shall therefore address to you there.
Yours sincerely C M Yonge
I have actually spoilt an ... continue reading
Dear Mr Freeman Having recently had a fresh look at Fridiswid’s window, I wish to explain that I find the green headed duck is not engaged in a miracle, but is merely an adjunct when she was hiding in the farm yard, and as the stately drake led forth his fleet upon the lake on Loch Lomond, he may be thus employed at home. There is so much worse a window near it that it brings ... continue reading
My dear Edith It is indeed a great treat to have had a note from you again. I always feel as if my grand setting to rights when you ought to have been resting in peace was one of the drops that assisted in making your bucket overflow Friday seems to me to have been a day that in the rudest health might be felt to be like air to a fish, but how kind the ... continue reading
Dear Mr Macmillan
I am sorry for the mistake, it was not wilful for I looked at the stamp, and found it so pale that I saw nothing but the Cl which I took for Clay.
Will ‘By-words in action’ do for the name of this collection of stories, as all illustrate some saying or other. I have recovered one from America, and will send it in a day or two, but I think it will ... continue reading