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 Anne, You must not expect a very continuous letter from me as Mary Davys is here but I believe the best chance is to begin a long time beforehand to thank you for your charming long letter which we were delighted to see on coming back from school on Sunday. You said when you were here that we should sit in the drawing room gasping for a drop of water but last Sunday ... continue reading
Pray tell Juliana that I have been told of a master at Rugby who was so fascinated with The Brownies that he ordered all the 30 old volumes of the magazine for his house!
... continue readingMy dear Miss Smith, Many thanks for your kind answer, I think these ladies’ biographies will be very nice work to do together, and I believe that to look into real life minutely is the best school for one’s own mind or for fiction. If I write nothing but fiction for some time, I begin to get stupid, and to feel rather as if it had been a long meal of sweets - then history is ... continue reading
Dear Mr Furnivall, Thanks for your enclosure I hope to make use of it when I get home, but just at present we are wanderers, very decided wanderers at this moment for I am writing at a little station on the Great Northern having missed our train by two minutes, so that we have the pleasure of waiting for three hours before we can get on to Peterborough and Ely. I hope to be at home ... continue reading