Background

Charlotte Mary Yonge was born on August 11, 1823, at Otterbourne House, Otterbourne near Winchester in the county of Hampshire, where her parents lived with her grandmother. She was the first of two children and was raised into a religious family background, devoted to the Church of England, and much influenced by John Keble, Vicar of Hursley from 1835, a near neighbour and one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement.

Charlotte's childhood was Spartan but appeared to be happy. The small estate gave her father a comfortable but not luxurious living. Her father William, who came from the old Devon family, had been brought up at Cornwood, a few miles from the family seat of Puslinch, some seven miles south-east of Plymouth. He was in the 52nd regiment at Waterloo, a fact which was always a source of pride to Charlotte.

Education

Yonge was educated at home. Her father taught her Latin, Greek, French, Euclid and algebra.

Career

Yoder began her career as a writer when she was just fifteen years old when her story of Le Chateau de Melville was sold commercially to raise funds for the Girl’s School. In 1844 she published her first serious work, ‘Abbeychurch’, and from then on wrote copiously, sometimes publishing four books a year. She maintained this prodigious output all her life, for she wrote not only novels, but history, school textbooks, short stories, memoirs and religious instruction.

It was, however, in the years 1853-1856 that Charlotte enjoyed her greatest success. This was the novel The Heir of Redclyffe, which was also her first book to appear in her own name. It was a book, which made her reputation. It provided the funding to enable the schooner Southern Cross to be put into service on behalf of George Selwyn. Similar charitable works were done with the profits from later novels.

During her career, Yoder was also a founder and editor for forty years of The Monthly Packet, a magazine (founded in 1851) with a varied readership, but targeted at British Anglican girls. She was an educator as well, teaching since she was seven years old in the village Sunday school, which her father built, for 71 years.

Yoder remained in Otterbourne all her life and died on the 24th March 1901, aged seventy-seven, two months after Queen Victoria and was buried in the new church at Otterbourne, on the 29th March 1901.

Achievements

• Nineteenth-century author Charlotte Yonge was the most popular writer associated with the Church of England anti-reform movement variously known as the Oxford Movement, the Tractarian Movement, and the Anglo-Catholic revival. Supporters of this movement, led by John Henry Newman (who later converted to Catholicism and became a cardinal), sought to return to the strict Anglican rituals that were derived from Roman Catholicism.
  
  In her long life, Yoder wrote one hundred and sixty books, including novels, historical works and romances, biographies, children’s books, reference books as well as translating numerous French books. Among the best known of her works are The Heir of Redclyffe, Heartsease, The Daisy Chain, and A Book of Golden Deeds. She also wrote Cameos from English History, Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands, and Hannah More.
  
  Yonge's work was widely read and respected in the nineteenth century. Among her admirers were Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, William Ewart Gladstone, Charles Kingsley, Christina Rossetti, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Anthony Trollope.

Works

Works Gallery

• book

  • The Little Duke 1905
  • The Story of the Christians and Moors of Spain
  • Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History 1873
  • The Dove in the Eagle's Nest 1866
  • The Daisy Chain 1856
  • The Heir of Redclyffe 1853
  • The Lances of Lynwood 1855
  • A Book of Golden Deeds 1864
  • Unknown to History: a story of the captivity of Mary of Scotland 1881
  • History of France 1882

Religion

Yonge was a member of the Church of England.

Membership

Around 1859 Yonge created a literary group made up of younger girl cousins in order that they could write essays and gain advice from Yonge on their writing. Together they created "The Barnacle" and this collaboration continued until about 1871. This was valuable as this may have been the last generation of girls to be educated at home.

Personality

In many ways Yoder was like her mother who was both intelligent and painfully shy. Both these characteristics were accentuated by Charlotte’s intense but private education and grew more pronounced as she grew older. Charlotte was a highly educated and intelligent woman but one who had little direct knowledge of life outside her village of Otterbourne.

Quotes from others about the person

• “Sir John Arthur Ransome Marriott wrote of her: "Charlotte Yonge was not only a prolific novelist, but a serious student of history, especially in its personal aspects. Having dealt in The Constable's Tower with Hubert de Burgh, with his famous defence of Dover Castle against Prince Louis of France, and his still more famous victory at sea off Sandwich, and with Edward I as a crusader (The Prince and the Page), Miss Yonge drew on the Vie de Bertrand du Guesclin as well as on Froissart for her fascinating tale The Lances of Lynwood. With characteristic modesty she expressed the hope that her sketch might "serve as an inducement to some young readers to make acquaintance with the delectable old Canon (Froissart) for themselves". The wise, of all ages, will fulfil her hope."”

Connections

Yonge was never married and had no children. However, during all her life, she taught children in Sunday and day schools and was particularly fond of girls, so much so that the boys were jealous. Her concern was to bring up these young girls with a good education and high moral standards so that they would become good wives and mothers.

father:

William Yonge - military

mother:

Fanny (Bargus) Yonge - teacher

brother:

Julian Yonge - military

References

• Charlotte Mary Yonge: Her Life And Letters...
  1903