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.
She was too shy to move in literary circles, though she did meet several writers who called on her, including Sarah Austin
and Sir Charles Trevelyan
. With each of them she felt uncomfortable, as...
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. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press.
Literary responses
Mary Martha Sherwood
Charlotte Yonge
in 1870 wrote that MMS
had adapted the original to her own Evangelical style and had introduced one admirable fairy tale.
Yonge, Charlotte, editor. A Storehouse of Stories. Macmillan.
At first Gladys was taught at home by governesses: the stout, comical angel Fräulein Sanders,
Stern, G. B. Monogram. Chapman and Hall.
48
followed by several lunatics, one elderly nymphomaniac (unsuccessful) and a prostitute
Stern, G. B. Monogram. Chapman and Hall.
49
(that is, a governess who was dismissed...
Cultural formation
Julia Stretton
She was born into the English middle class, and became a sincere and earnest Anglican
. She grew up in an industrial, working-class area, in which her family was clearly marked out as superior to...
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...
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.
FT
published a novel entitled The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman, Illustrated with occasional extracts from her diary.
Charlotte Yonge
had not yet published her novel The Clever Woman of the Family...
Intertextuality and Influence
Katharine Tynan
Despite the title, these poems do not present new themes, images, or structures. The most effective among them return to a theme always close to her heart: maternity. She celebrates female strength in two poems,...
Education
Lucy Walford
Typically for her class, the young Lucy Colquhoun was placed in the care of a nurse, whom she referred to as Mistress Aitken. She was educated at home by two German governesses, Fräulein Emma Lindemann
Intertextuality and Influence
Lucy Walford
In Recollections of a Scottish Novelist, LW
records her early love of literature. The books she read as a child, especially at the age of seven—including Charlotte Yonge
's The Little Duke, works...
Education
Mary Wesley
Mary acquired various country skills, like milking (by hand), butter-making, and of course riding.
Wesley, Mary, and Kim Sayer. Part of the Scenery. Bantam.
19, 20
She was not expected, however, to need to acquire skills that were marketable. Initially she was educated by about...
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
