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 Smith
I am glad I know you are at home that I may send you not lost but found. I have, as you desired me, taken great liberties with the correction. I think that what I have chiefly to observe is that you have here and there made it obscure by elliptical writing, and that you must beware of now which comes very often over, and I used, by my home critic, to ... continue reading
My dear Miss Yonge I have given our printer orders to go on with the 'Clever Woman'. I hope you will receive proofs at once & have a rapid supply. It will make some such work as 'The Trial,' as you wish.
I have corresponded with a friend of yours about 'Events of the Month.' I think the idea admirable the want is a crying one. But it should be [illegible] and well carried out. I hardly ... continue reading
My dear Mrs Johns, Thank you so much for letting me [see] Mr Ruskin’s very characteristic opinion of the beautiful Griselda work. I have thought and talked it over with my mother, and certainly it is a complication, but would not the most satisfactory course be to ask some opinion of a person such as Richmond a thorough artist, and also a religious man, a gentleman, and father of daughters whether it would be his judgment ... continue reading
My dear Miss Sewell, I shall be very glad to see you on the 2nd and hope we shall do a great deal of business together
Yours sincerely C M Yonge
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