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 Miss Smith
Many thanks for Delicia, who is very pretty, and I shall be very glad of her when I can put her in.
I envy the spirit of the people who finished their Whitsuntide decorations before the early service. I am thankful enough to get them all done on Saturday
yours sincerely C M Yonge
... continue readingDear Mr Macmillan, We are at home at last and in three days more I hope to send up the copy for the printer of all the ancient history Golden Deeds. Of course he will let me have the proofs. I hope the delay will not prove to have been of consequence. Are there to be any vignettes to the chapters, if there are, there is a story of the Coliseum which quite asks for one ... continue reading
My dear Ellie-
I have just heard of that having happened which for years I have feared to recollect must come some day. I don't know how to dwell on it or how to think of it. I think what comes before me oftenest is selfishly the sorrow for not having seen more of him this last year, especially this spring.
There are some friends that one looks to like a sort of father, and he was ... continue reading
My dear Mary Edmund Morshead has just been here, and we informed him of his new cousin. It did take me by surprise and reminded me of a lady in one of Miss Ingelow’s books who says her niece had babies with lightening [sic] rapidity- It is much for Sydney to have this nursing on her hands just after her own illness I have been out today and hope to be quite let loose ... continue reading