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.
Feb 17 th [1877]

My dear Christabel

It is a beautiful story If May & I could be girls again how we should rave about those princes. I hope some one else is capable. One or two things- Why were appletrees rare? I thought they were genuine old English I’m sure crabs are! Alvarez is a patronymic he should be Alvare, and the Portuguese would have called Sir Walter Don Guiltierre

I think the ... continue reading

Elderfield
Decr 19th [after 1863]

Dearest Jay Thank you – here are a few hardly worth it

Your affec C M Yonge

... continue reading
Clovelly Belgrave Crescent Torquay
June 8th [1887]

My dear Mr Moor

I wrote the paper you asked me to do for the CQ but I am sorry to say it was not good enough, and was rejected. I rather suspected that it would be for it was too long and too like a report. Do you like to have it for use in any other way? I have had an article from Mr Donald Mackay sent me for the Packet for August ... continue reading

Otterbourn
Sept 19th [1846]

My dear Anne Thank you for your letter. I am very sorry you feel so deplorable and still more sorry that our last conversation should have been such as to leave an uncomfortable impression on your mind I am afraid it was all my fault and I am particularly sorry to have talked in such a manner as to make you think I meant to set myself up for an example which was far ... continue reading