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, 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.
GF
enjoyed a high literary and personal reputation during and immediately after her life. One article, published soon after her death in The Catholic World, compared her favourably with Jane Austen
, and claimed...
EJW
also wrote novels which respond in similar manner to Charlotte Yonge
's Heartsease; or, The Brother's Wife and Elizabeth Sewell
's Amy Herbert. In each of these (titled respectively Hearts-ease in the Family...
Textual Production
Agnes Giberne
This means AG
was aiming at the market dominated by the work of Charlotte Yonge
. Her books for the young were often read to pieces, but most went through a series of reprints. Some...
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Helen Mathers
A publisher's note in the one-volume publication of 1892 called the book a genuine novelty. The idea of a novel written by twenty-four popular writers is certainly an original one. The ladies and gentlemen who...
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Kate Greenaway
Throughout the 1880s KG
illustrated many little books by well-known authors. In 1883 she provided illustrations for Little Ann and Other Poems, a collection by the early nineteenth-century children's writers Ann (later Gilbert)
and...
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Charlotte Mew
Her essay addresses several works by women writers: Sophia Lee
's The Recess, Emily Finch
's Last Days of Mary Stuart, Charlotte Yonge
's Unknown to History, and Harriet Martineau
's The Anglers of the Dove.
Mew, Charlotte. Collected Poems and Prose. Editor Warner, Val, Carcanet and Virago.
378-9, 381
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E. M. Delafield
EMD
contributed an introduction to Georgina Battiscombe
's biography Charlotte Mary Yonge
: The Story of an Uneventful Life.
EJ
contributed an introduction to a volume, the seventh in John Lehmann
's The Chiltern Library, published in 1947 and containing two titles by Elizabeth Gaskell
. In her introduction to Thackeray
's Vanity...
“About The National Society (Church of England) for Promoting Religious Education”. The National Society for Promoting Religious Education: The Society.
It issued a number of titles by FMP
, many of them...
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Anne Mozley
In 1842 AM
founded the informal family paper The Magazine for the Young (also known as The Pink Mag), which she subsequently handed over to Charlotte Yonge
.
Battiscombe, Georgina, and E. M. Delafield. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable and Company.
66
Timeline
1765: The didactic History of Little Goody Two-Shoes...
Writing climate item
1765
The didactic History of Little Goody Two-Shoes was published by John Newbery: the most popular children's book of its period. It had fourteen reprints before 1814.
14 September 1767: Midwife Elizabeth Brownrigg was hanged at...
Building item
14 September 1767
Midwife Elizabeth Brownrigg
was hanged at Tyburn (in London near the present Marble Arch) for the murder of Mary Clifford
, a workhouse apprentice.
1832: Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's...
Writing climate item
1832
Joseph Henry Parker
took over his uncle's Oxford bookselling and publishing business; as J. H. Parker
it soon became the foremost publisher of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement.
5 February 1836: The children's writer Dorothy Kilner died...
Women writers item
5 February 1836
The children's writerDorothy Kilner
died at Stratford near London; she and her sister-in-law, Mary Ann Kilner
(1753-1831), published their anonymous, undated works through John Marshall
from the 1770s.
By 7 November 1874: Mary Bramston (a friend of Charlotte Yonge...
April 1879: James Murray—editor since 1 March of what...
Writing climate item
April 1879
James Murray
—editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.
June 1899: The Evangelical magazine The Monthly Packet...
Writing climate item
June 1899
The EvangelicalmagazineThe Monthly Packet ceased publication, nine years after its original editor, Charlotte Yonge
, had resigned from it.
Texts
Yonge, Charlotte. A Book of Golden Deeds. Macmillan, 1864.
Yonge, Charlotte, editor. A Storehouse of Stories. Macmillan, 1872.
Yonge, Charlotte. Abbeychurch. James Burns, 1844.
Yonge, Charlotte. An Old Woman’s Outlook in a Hampshire Village. Macmillan, 1892.
Mozley, Anne, and Charlotte Yonge. “Appendix D: Clever Women”. The Clever Woman of the Family, edited by Clare Simmons and Clare Simmons, Broadview, 2001, pp. 591-8.
Yonge, Charlotte et al. Astray. Hatchards, 1886.
Yonge, Charlotte. Aunt Charlotte’s Stories of English History for the Little Ones. Marcus Ward, 1873.
Yonge, Charlotte, editor. Biographies of Good Women. J. and C. Mozley, 1862.
Yonge, Charlotte. Countess Kate. J. and C. Mozley, 1862.
Yonge, Charlotte. Deacon’s Book of Dates. C. W. Deacon, 1888.
Yonge, Charlotte. Dynevor Terrace. John Parker, 1857.
Yonge, Charlotte. Hannah More. W. H. Allen, 1888.
Yonge, Charlotte. Heartsease. John Parker, 1854.
Yonge, Charlotte. Henrietta’s Wish. Joseph Masters, 1850.
Sewell, Elizabeth, and Charlotte Yonge. Historical Selections. Macmillan, 1868.
Yonge, Charlotte. History of Christian Names. Parker, Son, and Bourn, 1863.
Yonge, Charlotte. Hopes and Fears. John Parker, 1860.
Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. “Introduction”. Victorian Tales for Girls, edited by Marghanita Laski, Pilot Press, 1947, pp. 7-12.
Yonge, Charlotte. “Introduction”. The Clever Woman of the Family, edited by Clare Simmons, Broadview Press, 2001, pp. 7-26.
Yonge, Charlotte. Kings of England. J. and C. Mozely, 1848.
Yonge, Charlotte. Life of John Coleridge Patteson. Macmillan, 1874.
Yonge, Charlotte. Magnum Bonum. Macmillan, 1879.
Yonge, Charlotte. Modern Broods. Macmillan, 1900.
Yonge, Charlotte. New Ground: Kaffirland. Derby, 1868.
Yonge, Charlotte. Pioneers and Founders. Macmillan, 1871.