Charlotte Yonge

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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, 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.
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.
Black and white reproduction of an albumen print of Charlotte Yonge's head by the Rev. Duke Yonge, 1858? The image is oval; the sitter is seen in profile facing left. She is wearing a small, light cap, a pale ribbon around her neck fastened with a brooch (perhaps a cameo), and embroidery around her collar. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Edna Lyall
Since the cousin with whom she shared lessons was three years older, Ada Ellen read a good many books at that time which must have been far beyond . . . [her] powers. At twelve...
Education Julia Stretton
Education was not the tyrannical care in those days that it is at present,
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
207
wrote the Charlotte Yonge in her memoir of JS .
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
207
Along with her sisters, Julia was taught at her...
Education Mary Louisa Molesworth
Educated privately at home, MLM could not remember a time before she could read, nor any time when reading stories was not my greatest delight.
Green, Roger Lancelyn. Mrs. Molesworth. Bodley Head.
21
She began formal learning with her mother. She read...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Mozley
Her father, Henry Mozley , was a bookseller and publisher. As well as Anne herself, he published Jane Harvey , Charlotte Yonge , and new editions of Hester Chapone 's Letters on the Improvement of...
Family and Intimate relationships Christabel Coleridge
CC and her distant cousin the novelist Charlotte Yonge shared a close and lifelong friendship.
Family and Intimate relationships Elma Napier
Her husband was the grandson of the first Lord Aldenham and the godson of Charlotte Mary Yonge .
Napier, Elma. Youth Is a Blunder. J. Cape.
5
He worked for his family firm, whose many foreign interests required him to travel to various countries.
Family and Intimate relationships Julia Stretton
Charlotte Yonge , writing of JS in Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign, 1897, observes that at this date an abnormally large family was no misfortune to themselves or their parents.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
204
Their house...
Family and Intimate relationships Margaret Mead
Her engagement at seventeen was probably, like her becoming a Christian, an act of rebellion against her parents, who were both nearly thirty when they married, and who wanted her to wait—especially against her mother...
Friends, Associates Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR wrote to Charlotte Yonge a few years later, lamenting: oh! what a pity it is that we are all growing old who have had such happy happy times with one another.
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters. Editors Bloom, Abigail Burnham and John Maynard, Ohio State University Press.
242
She uttered...
Friends, Associates Margaret Kennedy
Other women writers with whom MK established friendships included Lettice Cooper , Phyllis Bentley (who had also been at Cheltenham ), Marghanita Laski , Elizabeth Jenkins , and Rose Macaulay . These authors supported and...
Friends, Associates Margaret Roberts
As well as her close friendship with Peard , living at Torquay made MR one of a circle of women writers which included Anna Drury , Christabel Coleridge , and (offstage, as it were) Charlotte Yonge
Friends, Associates Anne Manning
Among her friends was fellow-writer Beatrice Braithwaite Batty , who published posthumous reminiscences of her in the Englishwoman's Review in February 1880. Charlotte Yonge , who praises Manning's qualities as a friend and a letter-writer...
Friends, Associates Edward FitzGerald
Despite a somewhat reclusive life both before and after his separation from his wife within a year of their marriage, he was well connected with the Victorian literary scene, and expressed strong opinions on women...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Sewell
The leaders she met included John Keble , John Henry Newman , and Henry Wilberforce ; she also met Charlotte Yonge .
Sewell, Elizabeth. The Autobiography of Elizabeth M. Sewell. Editor Sewell, Eleanor L., Longmans, Green.
62-3
It was soon after this meeting that Newman, Wilberforce, and Edward Bellasis all joined the Catholic Church .
Friends, Associates John Strange Winter
JSW had an extensive social circle in London—her biographer, Oliver Bainbridge , notes that a number of social claims were made upon her by reason of her popularity, and that these were always in advance...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Yonge, Charlotte. “Preface to First Edition”. History of Christian Names, Macmillan, 1884, p. v - viii.
Yonge, Charlotte. Reasons Why I Am a Catholic and Not a Roman Catholic. Wells Gardner, Darton, 1901.
Yonge, Charlotte. Scenes and Characters. James Burns, 1847.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Caged Lion. Macmillan, 1870.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Chaplet of Pearls. Macmillan, 1868.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Clever Woman of the Family. Macmillan, 1865.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Daisy Chain. John Parker, 1856.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Daisy Chain. Macmillan, 1892.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Dove in the Eagle’s Nest. Macmillan, 1866.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Heir of Redclyffe. John Parker, 1853.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Lances of Lynwood. John Parker, 1855.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Little Duke. John Parker, 1854.
Awdry, Frances et al. The Miz Maze. Macmillan, 1883.
Yonge, Charlotte, and Christabel Coleridge, editors. The Monthly Packet. J. and C. Mozely.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Pigeon Pie. J. and C. Mozley, 1860.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Pillars of the House. Macmillan, 1873.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Prince and the Page. Macmillan, 1866.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Seal. 1869.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Stokesley Secret. J. and C. Mozeley, 1861.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Three Brides. Macmillan, 1876.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Trial. Macmillan, 1864.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Two Guardians. Joseph Masters, 1852.
Yonge, Charlotte. The Young Step-Mother. Parker, Son and Bourn, 1861.
Yonge, Charlotte. Unknown to History. Macmillan, 1882.
Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. Victorian Tales for Girls. Editor Laski, Marghanita, Pilot Press, 1947.