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 Production Frances Mary Peard
The National Society's Depository , an offshoot of the Anglican National Society , had been founded to publish religious reading-matter for the young.
“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...
Education Carola Oman
The children's great delight was their mother reading aloud: theLamb s' Tales from Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott 's poems, William Edmonstoune Aytoun 's Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, 1865, Mary Martha Sherwood
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 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...
Education Elma Napier
In spite of the fact that her family did not value literature as much as games, and that her mother had specific ideas about what girls should read, EN devoured every book she could get...
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.
Intertextuality and Influence Dervla Murphy
In 1971, the present state of Bangladesh (formerly known as East Pakistan) had seceded from Pakistan, which had then fought a war with India (3-16 December 1971) over the secession. DM was interested in the...
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.
Tillotson, Kathleen et al. “Harriett Mozley”. Mid-Victorian Studies, Athlone Press, pp. 38-48.
38-9
It was read everywhere by both High and Low Church parties. Several...
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...
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...
Textual Production 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
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Mozley
Clever Women, published in Blackwood's in 1868, considers the term of opprobrium with a possible nod to Charlotte Yonge 's The Clever Woman of the Family. AM takes up the class of able...
Textual Features Anne Mozley
The review of Adam Bede is indeed most perceptive as well as detailed. AM begins by noticing how novels have been expanding their empire: how many have been added to their readership by the newer...
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...
Literary responses Viola Meynell
In The Bookman, C. E. Lawrence welcomed this novel as an individual effort of work which proves that however much she may have studied in the past . . . Miss Meynell has a...

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.