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...
Thank you for your letter and exposition of Lord Hartington's views. I think it is very hard on Lords Salisbury and Iddesleigh, who have been stanch, [sic] religious Churchmen all their lives, to be accused of making a party cry of the Church's danger; and it was not they, but the Record, who published the scheme of the 400 robbers. It seems to me that, if Lord Hartington and ... continue reading
My dear Miss Yonge, It is most kind of you to take my crude criticism in so good part. I did think of the parts, and your possible motive in dwelling on the opening chapter in the slight way you have done. Still with an eye to what is coming I cannot but think that the opening should be fuller, more sonorous and in a higher key. But I have asked Mr Clay to let ... continue reading
My dear Mr Macmillan, We - ie Miss Sewell and I - send off by train today the first section of our extracts for your inspection. They are intended to cover the reigns of Williams I & II, exclusive of the first Crusade - which is to class in with the other crusades in the next division. There is a list in the pencil of the Authors and subjects, we took long pieces because there is ... continue reading
Dear Miss Yonge, [First page largely indecipherable, but seems to be concerned withThe Danvers Papers ]
The Sunday Library is making progress I hope. . . I have found it useful to have someone to depute the correspondence to and combat the kind of [illegible] on the spot to take matters over. A lady friend of Mrs Craik, a Miss Martin, has undertaken this. She is a lady of quite exceptional poise & cultivation, with extensive ... continue reading