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...

Dear Miss Yonge,                                                                   How do you like this? I think a [illegible] ly cheap book [illegible] [illegible]  made a profit. Yours very f’lly A. Macmillan Alexander Macmillan to Charlotte Mary Yonge Copy outletter book British Library Add MSS.55386 (2) P.701   Dear Miss Yonge,                                           Dec. 3. 1866   I have received ... continue reading
Elderfield
April 9th [late 1890s?]

My dear Mrs England A basket of what we can get shall be left at your door about two o’clock on Wednesday.

I have told the children, but we do not live in the same profusion as heretofore Squires have grown so much more particular about trespassing than they used to be in the good old Heathcote days that we are cut off from many of our best copses!

yours sincerely C M Yonge

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[Late August 1868]

My dear Duke Thank you for your very kind letter, which has been a great pleasure to me and will be so to think of. Though every one of our friends is so kind one’s own people that all one’s life is mixed up with are so much more to one. I think that the expectation of the Consecration must have been exciting Mamma more than we knew for weeks before, she so often fancied ... continue reading

How can I grieve and sorrow about my dear dear Father’s blessed end? . . . I shall like the photograph of Hursley Vicarage and Church, the lawn and group upon it. But most shall I like to think that Mr. Keble, and I dare say Dr. Moberly too, pray for me and this Mission. I need the prayers of all good people indeed.

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