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.
Her daughter mentions among EM
's friends the gifted Frances Bunnett
(who published her translations as F. E. Bunnett), Frances Alleyne
(also a translator, as S. [Sarah] F. Alleyne), and Frances Mary Owen
Literary responses
Emma Marshall
Miss Eden (eldest daughter of a Bishop of Bath and Wells) liked Helen's Diary the best of EM
's books so far. She thought it quite as good as some of Miss Sewell
's, and...
Literary responses
Emma Marshall
One of EM
's clerical admirers called this book a particularly strong instance of the way her heroines (if not quite up to Jane Austen
's Anne Elliot or Charlotte Yonge
's Violet in Heartsease...
Textual Production
Helen Mathers
A publisher's note in the one-volume publication of 1892 called the book a genuine novelty. The idea of a novel written by twenty-four popular writers is certainly an original one. The ladies and gentlemen who...
Family and Intimate relationships
Margaret Mead
Her engagement at seventeen was probably, like her becoming a Christian, an act of rebellion against her parents, who were both nearly thirty when they married, and who wanted her to wait—especially against her mother...
Textual Production
Charlotte Mew
Her essay addresses several works by women writers: Sophia Lee
's The Recess, Emily Finch
's Last Days of Mary Stuart, Charlotte Yonge
's Unknown to History, and Harriet Martineau
's The Anglers of the Dove.
Mew, Charlotte. Collected Poems and Prose. Editor Warner, Val, Carcanet and Virago.
378-9, 381
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
