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.
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
Education
Edna Lyall
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Edna Lyall
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...
Macaulay, Rose. Letters to a Friend from Rose Macaulay 1950-1952. Editor Babington Smith, Constance, Fontana.
14
LeFanu notes that it takes the themes of inheritance and unjust accusation so characteristic of the novels of Charlotte Yonge
and Sir Walter Scott
Intertextuality and Influence
Rose Macaulay
This roman à clef set in pre-war London touches on the opposition between conventional sexual mores and sexual freedom, and has fun with the idea of indiscriminate commitment to worthy causes. The young Eddy Oliver...
Textual Features
Rose Macaulay
This was the first full-length critical work on Forster. It expressed admiration for his writing, but some amusement or impatience over what it presents as his obsession with Englishness and with the all-male educational world...
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...
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/.
It is not...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates
Anne Manning
Among her friends was fellow-writer Beatrice Braithwaite Batty
, who published posthumous reminiscences of her in the Englishwoman's Review in February 1880. Charlotte Yonge
, who praises Manning's qualities as a friend and a letter-writer...
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....
Material Conditions of Writing
Anne Manning
According to the old Dictionary of National Biography, she wrote this at Norbury Priory near Mickleham. Charlotte Yonge
links it with the priory she mentions on Salisbury Plain.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Oliphant, Margaret et al. Women Novelists of Queen Victoria’s Reign. Hurst and Blackett.
212
A young aunt...
Textual Production
Anne Manning
Charlotte Yonge
cites this by two further alternative titles: Passages in the Life of an Authoress and Some Passages in the Life of an Authoress. It was never finished and never appeared in book...
