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, 1943, 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, 1943.
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.
In addition to her relationship with Charlotte Yonge
, CC
had a productive friendship with Mary Bramston
. The move to Torquay made her one of a group of women writers in the area, all...
Friends, Associates
Mary Linskill
In these straits she found her friends worse than useless; they had never experienced poverty, far less starvation. Jenny Miles
apparently reproached her with the fact that George Eliot
, Charlotte Yonge
, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Friends, Associates
John Strange Winter
JSW
had an extensive social circle in London—her biographer, Oliver Bainbridge
, notes that a number of social claims were made upon her by reason of her popularity, and that these were always in advance...
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...
Health
Anne Manning
Charlotte Yonge
says that her health began to fail in 1854. This seems an improbably early date, since she continued for almost two more decades to produce on average more than a book a year....
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...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah Fielding
The book's admirers included (perhaps embarrassingly) the courtesan Teresia Constantia Phillips
, who praised it in her Memoirs.
Catto, Susan J. Modest Ambition: The Influence of Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and the Ideal of Female Diffidence on Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Frances Brooke. University of Oxford, 1998.
72
Jane Collier
in her commonplace-book not only noted that Mrs Teachum has the Swift
ian...
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,...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jessie Fothergill
Scholar Helen Debenham
argues that it disconcertingly revises Charlotte Yonge and upsets expected patterns of response
Debenham, Helen. “’Almost always two sides to a question’: the novels of Jessie Fothergill”. Popular Victorian Women Writers, edited by Kay Boardman and Shirley Jones, Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 66-89.
73
by revising a familiar story of renunciation and moral reward.
Intertextuality and Influence
Monica Furlong
This book reflects MF
's wide reading and an impish sense of humour employed to help her and her readers live with the unacceptable. Each chapter comes headed by a very funny cartoon and a...
Intertextuality and Influence
Dinah Mulock Craik
These writings, argues critic Sally Mitchell
, were essentially in the sentimental mode, which sought to educate by promoting habits of good feeling rather than by presenting either rational arguments or deserved punishments.
Her central characters, May and Elfie (of whom May is three years older), are her sister Amy Agnes
and herself. Also highly important are their parents, Nurse, Cook or Cookie, and the elder brother and...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Yonge, Charlotte. Unknown to History. Macmillan, 1882, 2 vols.
Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. Victorian Tales for Girls. Editor Laski, Marghanita, Pilot Press, 1947.
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.
