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 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
My dear Canon Warburton
‘Foundations of the Creed’ by the Bishop of Carlisle has just been mentioned to me in a letter as a particularly good book for the present time. Perhaps someone else has set it down, but it is better to run the risk of mentioning what is known than to leave it out.
That Pearl story haunts me. I think I see how it may make a very nice little romance after incubation!
Yours ... continue reading
Dear Mr Craik
It is a beautiful engraving, and I am much obliged for your kind proposal. But I don’t think anything can be made of the ladies of the Crusades for those about whom much is known were not very edifying characters and the good ones are pretty much lost in the light of their husbands.
But what would you think of a history of the wars between the Spaniards and Moors- from the Moorish conquest ... continue reading
Dear Madam
I am sorry to say your story did not come till the number had been chosen and sent to the printer. It is very pretty, but here and there a little long.
Yours truly C M Yonge
... continue reading