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...

Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Sept 13th 1877

My dear Miss [Sewell]

Many thanks for your Revolution which looks very entertaining, though I have not thoroughly encountered its curling propensities and as you may suppose, I trust you! I shall be glad to have your further papers in the next year. They always tell.

Yours sincerely C M Yonge

... continue reading
[Salisbury]
[1891]

Dean Church's beautiful book came in time for me to work it in with the Cardinal. It is a sort of key. By the way, there is a mistake- I don't know whether J. H. N.'s or Miss Mozley's - about the consecration of a church to which he could not go in 1838: it is said to be Hursley but it really was Otterbourne. Hursley was not consecrated, of course, till ... continue reading

Puslinch Yealmpton
Oct 12th 1867

Dear Mr Craik I am very happy to agree to this arrangement and thank you for providing the early sheets. Is it not however Holland that is concerned and not Denmark?

I am in a difficulty of my own making. I signed an agreement in the spring with one Mr Hugo Borges that he should have the early sheets of the Chaplet of Pearls to translate for a Roman Cronik as he calls it, which he and ... continue reading

Otterbourne
Oct 31st 1855
My dear Sir I am much obliged by your flattering offer but I do not wish to depart from my rule of never parting with my copyright My present view is to print 5000 at my own cost, requesting you to publish them on commission. My own work in the M.S is not fully completed but I hope soon to have it ready Yours truly C M Yonge I should be obliged if you would send me a copy of Redclyffe ... continue reading