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.
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...
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.
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...
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
Education
Anne Ridler
Her education began with her mother and a governess. At six she began attending a class run by the sister of another Rugby master. Later came visits to a piano teacher, and at home a...
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...
Education
Anne Manning
AM
was taught at home by both her mother and her father, with the help of masters for special accomplishments,
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
211
and for a short time by a governess. Charlotte Yonge
, who wrote of...
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...
Education
G. B. Stern
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
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...
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.
CFA
's husband
believed that Keble
endowed her with a sense of the magic, of the...
Cultural formation
Anne Manning
She was born into a well-established English family; Charlotte Yonge
says her father belonged to the higher professional class:
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
211
an uncle, cousin, and brother all distinguished themselves in legal fields.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
