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.
May 24th 1875

My dear Christabel

The 1st of July is the right day, but it is convenient to be beforehand with it, as things get much better read than in the great mass of strangers. Miss Bramston has sent a splendid one called the Isle of Progress, - all about 500 years hence. Fanny Awdry has done rather a nice one of the boy type, and I have a few more but dying is so much ... continue reading

Decr 18th [1865]
[To Alexander Macmillan]

I would think that Mr Lea’s proposal was a very good one, and that the Golden Deeds might be very useful as such a class book. But I imagine that to give it currency, it would be advisable to get it placed on the list of books recommended by the Council of Education people. I suppose there would have to be some omissions to make it into so cheap a book.

Yours sincerely C M ... continue reading

Elderfield
March 6th 1890

Dear Mr Innes, I hope there are still some Castle builders left for a lady in Portugal wrote a few days ago to ask me if it was still to be had, and I answered that it was. I suppose the Modern Landmarks are put out by later books.

I am concerned about a long series of scientific papers on the physical structure of the Earth. I accepted them some time ago from Miss Gaye and spoke ... continue reading

Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester
Sept 13th [1871]
My dear Charlotte, I found that when Helen had read the history of England she wanted something to give her a notion of the general keeping of the whole world so I set her on in the ancient Landmarks which she likes – to my surprise much better than English history. (She had begun with Little Arthur). But I thought her English history was too much in the rear so I made her read the [[cmybook:6]Kings ... continue reading