Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Charlotte Yonge
-
Standard Name: Yonge, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Mary Yonge
Pseudonym: Aunt Charlotte
CY
was a staggeringly prolific author. Her more than two hundred works include domestic and historical novels for both adults and children, biographies, history and language textbooks, religious manuals, and a fragment of autobiography. She became famous without adopting many of the habits of the Victorian professional author: she published anonymously and donated most of her earnings to charity. Though her most successful titles remained household names for generations, many others in the Macmillan Uniform Edition were quickly forgotten.
Delafield, E. M., and Georgina Battiscombe. “Introduction”. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life, Constable and Company, 1943, pp. 9-15.
14
Her underlying purpose is always religious. Her biographer Georgina Battiscombe
writes that filial duty is her great theme, to which both love and common sense must be sacrificed.
Battiscombe, Georgina, and E. M. Delafield. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable and Company, 1943.
74-5
She advises submission as a Christian duty and not as an exclusively gendered ideal. She deals also in religious scruples and struggles: confirmation (as the climax of an education in spiritual self-examination) is often an issue for her characters.
This roman à clef set in pre-war London touches on the opposition between conventional sexual mores and sexual freedom, and has fun with the idea of indiscriminate commitment to worthy causes. The young Eddy Oliver...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Sewell
She was a major influence on Anglican circles of her day. John Sutherland considers her to hold second place to Charlotte Yonge
.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Laski, Marghanita, and Georgina Battiscombe, editors. A Chaplet for Charlotte Yonge. Cresset Press, 1965.
11, 13
Leisure and Society
Carola Oman
In a letter to the Times in 1962, CO
described a bookcase in her writing-room which held the works she described as All the Winners. For a writer of fairly conservative views and strong...
Literary responses
Rosa Nouchette Carey
Elaine Hartnell
argues that the reception of RNC
's work was tied somewhat to its modes and places of publication, notably her serialisation in journals edited by Ellen Wood
, Charlotte Yonge
, and Annie S. Swan
Literary responses
George Eliot
Cross
, concerned to protect and dignify her, chose the more sententious passages and excluded the spontaneous, trivial, and humorous remarks
Eliot, George. “Preface”. The George Eliot Letters, edited by Gordon S. Haight, Yale University Press, 1954, p. 1: ix - lxxvii.
xiv
from her personal writings, and presented an icon of Victorian moral earnestness; many...
Literary responses
Rosa Nouchette Carey
During her lifetime there was no shortage, in reviews of her novels in the popular press, of such adjectives as fresh, charming, and pretty, handy for quoting in listings of her works...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Charles
Although she made little money, EC
made a name for herself with the Chronicles. The novel went through several editions, as well as being translated into many European languages, Arabic, and numerous Indian dialects...
Literary responses
Harriett Mozley
HM
's brother John Henry
(later famous as Cardinal Newman) said her first book had the fault of being too brilliant.
qtd. in
Tillotson, Kathleen et al. “Harriett Mozley”. Mid-Victorian Studies, Athlone Press, 1965, pp. 38-48.
38-9
It was read everywhere by both High and Low Church parties. Several...
Literary responses
Georgiana Fullerton
GF
's mother, Lady Granville
, is said to have regretted that Ellen Middleton was quite so mournful. But contemporary reviewers were generally positive, and the novel proved popular. William Ewart Gladstone
, reviewing it...
Literary responses
Georgiana Fullerton
Geraldine Jewsbury
, reviewing this novel for the Athenæum, commented that GFalways writes with grace and tenderness, but she is afraid to trust herself to her own gifts. She seems to have a...
Literary responses
Emma Marshall
Miss Eden (eldest daughter of a Bishop of Bath and Wells) liked Helen's Diary the best of EM
's books so far. She thought it quite as good as some of Miss Sewell
's, and...
Literary responses
Margaret Oliphant
MO
's Autobiography had modern editions in 1974, 1988, and 1990. Q. D. Leavis
(who combined deep respect for Oliphant with harsh criticism of Charlotte Yonge
), in a preface to the 1974 edition, argued...
Literary responses
Emma Marshall
One of EM
's clerical admirers called this book a particularly strong instance of the way her heroines (if not quite up to Jane Austen
's Anne Elliot or Charlotte Yonge
's Violet in Heartsease...
