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
Textual Features Ivy Compton-Burnett
The protagonist, a clergyman's daughter, lives up to her name. She is a child at her mother's graveside in the book's opening scene: by the age of thirty-three she has repeatedly sacrificed her hopes of...
Residence Anne Manning
Charlotte Yonge referred to AM 's eventless life.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
211
It has nevertheless generated conflicting stories about where it was actually lived. Yonge mentions neither neither Mickleham nor Reigate Hill, places associated by other sources with...
Reception Mary Anne Barker
The Times, reviewing Sybil's Book in late 1873, found it both delightful and thoroughly original.
Gilderdale, Betty. The Seven Lives of Lady Barker. Canterbury University Press.
185
Betty Gilderdale endorses this, calling it the first book to be published in England for teenage girls...
Reception Rhoda Broughton
An article by Eliza Lynn Linton written in June 1887 (well after the ebbing of RB 's early, scandalous reputation) judged that her books were always essentially love-stories, and nothing else,
Linton, Eliza Lynn. “Miss Broughton’s Novels”. Temple Bar, Vol.
80
, pp. 196-09.
203
but that without...
Reception Lucas Malet
Two things about this novel gave offence initially and had a long-term effect on its reputation: its treating the nasty
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
topic of deformity, and its involving the hero emotionally with three women (his mother as...
Publishing Frances Mary Peard
FMP published under her initials her first book: The Wood-Cart: and Other Tales of the South of France, a collection of stories reprinted from The Magazine for the Young (which, like The Monthly Packet...
Publishing Frances Mary Peard
FMP 's acquaintance with Charlotte Yonge began in connection with her writing for Yonge's Monthly Paper of Sunday Teaching a paper on the Jewish Sects
Harris, Mary J. Y. Memoirs of Frances Mary Peard. W. H. Smith.
48
(Old Testament, no doubt), which Yonge intended to publish...
Publishing Rosa Nouchette Carey
RNC published in three volumes Heriot's Choice: a Tale, which had first appeared serially in the Monthly Packet (edited by Charlotte Yonge ), between 1877 and this year.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press.
Hartnell, Elaine. Gender, Religion, and Domesticity in the Novels of Rosa Nouchette Carey. Ashgate.
20
Publishing Annie Keary
AK 's contributions to The Monthly Packet, an evangelical periodical edited by Charlotte Yonge , began not with a story but with chapters on early Norwegian history,
Keary, Eliza. Memoir of Annie Keary. Macmillan.
127
for which she gathered books and...
Publishing Juliana Horatia Ewing
Juliana Horatia Gatty (later JHE ) first reached print, with the story A Bit of Green. It appeared in the Monthly Packet, which was edited by Charlotte Mary Yonge .
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Nadel, Ira Bruce, and William E. Fredeman, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 21. Gale Research.
21: 172
Publishing Roma White
In 1891 she contributed as Blanche Oram to volume two of the new series of The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church (now a bi-annual publication), edited by Christabel Coleridge
Publishing Harriett Mozley
HM contributed to The Magazine for the Young, sold for twopence, which was edited first by her sister-in-law Anne and later by Charlotte Yonge . Tillotson remarks that writing for children's periodicals absorbed most...
Publishing Elizabeth Sewell
ES was a frequent contributor to Charlotte Yonge 's The Monthly Packet. She also published articles on the Anglican Church and female education, notably including The reign of pedantry in girls' schools in The...
Author summary Marghanita Laski
ML , a cultural force in twentieth-century Britain, published six novels, four biographies (one on multiple subjects), an anti-nuclear play, a collection of children's stories, three quasi-scientific investigations into secular and religious experiences, and various...
politics John Strange Winter
JSW 's interest in animal welfare was linked to her passion for dress reform, notably her opposition to the use of birds in decoration or fashion (a letter she wrote to Charlotte Yonge details how...

Timeline

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Texts

Yonge, Charlotte. What Books to Lend and What to Give. National Society’s Depository, 1887.
Yonge, Charlotte. Womankind. Mozley and Smith, 1876.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett, 1897.