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...

25 September 1838
My dear Anne Though I wrote to you so short a time ago, I cannot let an opportunity pass without writing. I wished for you last Friday, for I think you would have liked our party of pleasure. As it was St.Matthew’s Day, we asked leave out for Johnnie, Duke, Archer and Charles Wither at seven o’ clock in the morning. They came here in a fly, the horses of which were ... continue reading
Elderfield
Decr 29th [1894]

My dear Mrs Blackburn It was very pleasant to see your writing again after so many years! Our intercourse used to be in the early ages, though I have kept up hearing of you from Lady Blachford, whom I saw last summer settle again at Cornwood to the great joy of the inhabitants.

I am glad you are to bring out so many of your works. I hope that congregation of terns that I once saw in ... continue reading

Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Decr 4th 1867

Dear Mr Craik, I hope this letter is a sufficient acknowledgement of the £25, as I have no receipt stamp at hand and this village does not provide such articles, and as they must not be bought of the unprivileged I cannot beg or borrow too often from our worthy neighbours at the shop

Yours sincerely C M Yonge

... continue reading
Otterbourne, Winchester
Aug 31st 1860

My dear Mrs Pascoe,

Just a few lines in haste to say that the two specimens arrived quite safe and in excellent order this morning - and that I greatly thank you and your friend for them. I wish I knew of a precedent of dried flowers travelling per post, but I don’t see how they can be charged as letters. Country posts are always more punctilious than the general post office, from the Jack in ... continue reading