Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823 - 1901)

Born 11 Aug 1823 in Otterbourne, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Died 24 Mar 1901 at age 77 in Otterbourne, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom

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Biography

Charlotte Yonge is Notable.

Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823–1901) was a best-selling Victorian novelist, world famous for her novel The Heir of Redclyffe (1853) as well as a prolific children's author. She wrote well over 100 books, including historical novels, family sagas, romances and children's books, as well as editing perhaps the first teenage magazine, The Monthly Packet. As a journalist, scholar, biographer, and literary critic, her life's work shows her also to have been a proponent of women’s rights and education. Sometimes referred to as "the novelist of the Oxford Movement", her work reflecting values and concerns of Anglo-Catholicism, she wrote to promote the values and tenets of 'High Church' Christianity.

The fascination of her story lies in the tension between her conformism and her extraordinary achievement. ^[1]

Birth and Parentage

Charlotte was born at Otterbourne (outside Winchester) on 11 August 1823, the first child of an infantry soldier, veteran of Waterloo, William Crawley Yonge, previously of the 52nd Regiment, and his wife, Frances (Fanny) Mary née Bargus. She was christened in Otterbourne on 17 September 1823. ^[2]

Early Life and Education

Strongly influenced by and devoted to her father who educated her and her younger brother Julian, at home. Charlotte wrote:

He was grave and external observers feared him... his great characteristic was thoroughness. Whatever he took in hand he carried out to the utmost, whether it was the designing of a church, the fortification of Portsmouth, or the lining of a work box or teaching his little girl to write....he got on perfectly well with my grandmamma who was always mistress of the house, when I first remember him... he was employing himself as his active mind, carpentering, gardening and getting the little bit of a farm into order and also acting as parish doctor.^[3]

Charlotte's earliest recollections were concerned with reading:

I could read to myself at four years old and I perfectly recollect the pleasure of finding I could do so, kneeling by a chair on which was spread a beautiful quarto edition of Robinson Crusoe , whose pictures I was looking at whilst Grandmamma read the newspaper aloud to my mother. I perfectly remember the place, in the middle of the shipwreck narrative, where, to my joy, I found myself making out the sense.^[4]

Life and Career

She founded and led the Gosling Society.^[5]

In 1891 she described herself in the national census of England and Wales as an Author And Living On My Own Means. ^[6]

Charlotte's obituary in The Times on 26 March, 1901 remembered that

it is of course as a writer that Miss Yonge will be remembered. She had an inventive mind and a ready pen, and a bare list of the books written or edited by her would probably occupy nearly a whole column of The Times. She wrote chiefly for young people, especially young girls, and her books are the result not only of a strong ethical purpose, but also of her firm devotion to the High Church view of Christian doctrine and practice. No doubt this caused her to be ignored by many hasty literary critics, who regarded her as beneath consideration, under the mistaken idea that her books were merely ‘goody-goody’ tracts in the guise of fiction, or at best, sentimental tales of dull girls. Against this view must be set the fact that her books were and still are read and re-read with keen delight not only by young girls but by older people whose literary judgment is not to be despised. Nor are her readers by any means limited to members of the Church of England, or even to believers in any form of Christianity. The truth is that her power of telling a story and her power of delineating character were great enough to throw certain obvious defects into the shade. Her earlier works seem nowadays too controversial, and at times even morbid, and this is notably the case with The Heir of Redclyffe, the best known of all her books. But as her mental powers matured these characteristics became less and less observable, though still she always clung to her ethical purpose, and had no sympathy for ‘art for art’s sake’ in literature.

Death and Burial

She lived at Otterbourne all of her life and died there on 24 March 1901. Her obituary in the Pall Mall Gazette on Monday 25 March 1901, praised her as

a sincere, high-minded woman, whose character stood revealed in her works; she wrote diligently and readily; and her many books have exercised a considerable influence for good.

Miss Yonge’s own life was one of devout piety and generous charity. She gave the profits on “The Daisy Chain,” two thousand pounds, towards the building of a missionary college at Auckland, New Zealand, and most of the proceeds of “The Heir of Redclyffe” towards the fitting out of Bishop Selwyn’s missionary schooner, the Southern Cross. ^[7][8]

Probate took place on 7 June 1901. ^[9]

Works

• Abbeychurch; or, Self Control and Self Conceit (1844)
• Scenes and Characters, or, Eighteen Months at Beechcroft (1847)
• Kings of England: a History for Young Children (1848)
• The Railroad Children (1849)
• Langley School (1850)
• The Two Guardians, or, Home in this World (1852)
• The Heir of Redclyffe (1853)
• Heartsease; or, The Brother's Wife (1854)
• The Little Duke: Richard the Fearless (1854)
• The Lances of Lynwood (1855)
• The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations (1856)
• Marie Thérèse de Lamourous: Foundress of the House of la Misércorde, at *Bourdeaux (1858)
• Countess Kate (1860)
• Friarswood Post-Office (1860)
• The Young Step-Mother; or a Chronicle of Mistakes (1861)
• History of Christian Names (1863)
• A Book of Golden Deeds of All Times and All Lands (1864)
• The Trial; or, More Links of the Daisy Chain (1864)
• The Clever Woman of the Family (1865)
• The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last Crusade (1866)
• The Dove in the Eagle's Nest (1866)
• The Chaplet of Pearls; or, The White and Black Ribaumont (1868)
• Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II (1868)
• Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe and Other Stories (1871)
• Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History (1873)
• The Pillars of the House: or, Under Wode, Under Rode (1873)
• Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands (1874)
• Aunt Charlotte’s Stories of French History for the Little Ones (1877)
• Young Folks' History of Rome (1878)
• Young Folks' History of England (1879)
• Young Folks' History of France (1879)
• Magnum Bonum; or, Mother Carey's Brood (1879)
• Unknown to History: A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland (1881)
• History of France (1882)
• The Armourer's Prentices (1884) Historical novel set in the time of Henry VIII.[25]
• The Two Sides of the Shield (1885) – sequel to Scenes and Characters, OCLC 10000148
• Hannah More (1888)
• A Reputed Changeling (1889)
• Two Penniless Princesses (1891)
• The Long Vacation (1895)
• Modern Broods (1900)

Sources

1. ↑ ed. Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan and Helen Schinske., The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge. (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.
2. ↑ Charlotte Mary Yonge, 17 Sep 1823 in England, Hampshire Bishop's Transcripts 1680-1892. FamilySearch Online Database with images, citing Baptism, Otterbourne, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom, England, Hampshire Bishop's Transcripts 1680-1892. Lancashire Record Office and Hampshire Record Office, United Kingdom. Retrieved from FamilySearch (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.
3. ↑ Yonge Family. William Crawley Yonge. A Waterloo Man. Retrieved from yongefamily (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.
4. ↑ Battiscombe, Georgina., (1944).,Charlotte Mary Yonge., London: Constable and Company. Retrieved from the Internet Archive (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.
5. ↑ Charlotte Mary Yonge fellowship. See Gosling Society Page. Retrieved from cmyf (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.
6. ↑ Charlotte M Yonge, Otterbourne, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom in England and Wales Census, 1891. FamilySearch Online Database with images, citing PRO RG 12, Hampshire county, subdistrict, The National Archives of the UK, Kew, Surrey. Retrieved from FamilySearch (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.
7. ↑ British Newspaper Archive. Pall Mall Gazette, Monday 25 March 1901. Retrieved from the BNA (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.
8. ↑ Miss Charlotte Yonge, 1901 in United States, GenealogyBank Historical Newspaper Obituaries, 1815-2011. FamilySearch Online Database, Retrieved from FamilySearch (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.
9. ↑ Charlotte Mary Yonge, 7 Jun 1901 in England and Wales, National Index of Wills and Administrations, 1858-1957. FamilySearch Online Database, citing Probate, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Great Britain.; FHL microfilm 251,383. Retrieved from FamilySearch (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.

• Wikipedia: Charlotte Mary Yonge

• Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823–1901). Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship. Retrieved from Cmyf (here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.

• Seeger, Mary K., Charlotte Mary Yonge. Retrieved from (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.

• FamilySearch Census Sources (Here;) Accessed 21 Sept 2023.

See also:

• 'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell, published by The Hogarth Press, Pimlico, London in 1996. ISBN 0 7126 7450 0, includes extensive family trees. Hundreds of friends, professional connections and people in the 'Bloomsbury set' are also mentioned in the text.'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell