‘What I Can Myself Remember’: Charlotte M. Yonge’s Life Writing

Sanders, Valerie

Abstract

Yonge’s childhood autobiography is well known to scholars as a record of her parents’ influence and companionship with her cousins, but she also scattered autobiographical memories through a variety of formats throughout her life. Contextualising discussion within the broader field of nineteenth-century women’s life writing, this chapter argues that Yonge’s commitment to multiple forms of life writing not only suffused her fiction, but also flourished elsewhere, charting recurrent concerns in ways and places that are less familiar to readers. While material from Yonge’s childhood is often recycled in her work, this chapter shows how she frequently returned to its earliest days and still more distant experiences of rural communities riven by class antagonism.

Citation

Sanders, V. (2022). ‘What I Can Myself Remember’: Charlotte M. Yonge’s Life Writing. In C. Walker Gore, C. Schultze, & J. Courtney (Eds.), Charlotte Mary Yonge: Writing the Victorian Age (25-43). Palgrave Macmillan (part of Springer Nature). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10672-9_2

• Online Publication Date: Nov 29, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Jan 15, 2025
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (part of Springer Nature)
• Pages: 25-43
• Book Title: Charlotte Mary Yonge: Writing the Victorian Age
• ISBN: 978-3-031-10671-2
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10672-9_2
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4298729