Charlotte M Yonge was one of the bestselling novelists of the Victorian period; she published prolifically during a lengthy writing career that lasted from the early 1850s to the 1890s, was highly regarded by contemporaries such as Tennyson and Kingsley, and continued to be widely read up till the 1940s even by unlikely figures such as Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Her work, on which Jane Austen exerted a significant influence, is central to an understanding of the development of the domestic novel, yet remains significantly less well known than that of other Victorian women writers such as Margaret Oliphant, Ellen Wood and M E Braddon. This book is the first full-length critical study of Yonge's writings, and presents an argument for the artistic coherence of her work as a novelist, as well as examining the reasons for its current non-canonical status. Reflecting Yonge's lifelong involvement in the Oxford Movement, and personal closeness to John Keble, the book situates her novels in the context of Tractarian aesthetics. Charlotte M Yonge was one of the bestselling novelists of the Victorian period; she published prolifically during a lengthy writing career that lasted from the early 1850s to the 1890s, was highly regarded by contemporaries such as Tennyson and Kingsley, and continued to be widely read up till the 1940s even by unlikely figures such as Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Her work, on which Jane Austen exerted a significant influence, is central to an understanding of the development of the domestic novel, yet remains significantly less well known than that of other Victorian women writers such as Margaret Oliphant, Ellen Wood and M E Braddon. This book is the first full-length critical study of Yonge's writings, and presents an argument for the artistic coherence of her work as a novelist, as well as examining the reasons for its current non-canonical status. Reflecting Yonge's lifelong involvement in the Oxford Movement, and personal closeness to John Keble, the book situates her novels in the context of Tractarian aesthetics. Preface: Yonge and the Realist Canon 9 Acknowledgements 21 Section One Realism, Domestic Ideology and the Tractarian Psychology of Religion 23 Chapter One Reading Charlotte M. Yonge 27 Chapter Two Feminism and Yonge's Christian Aesthetic 63 Chapter Three Development as a Theology of Character in Yonge and Newman 87 Section Two Yonge and the Theory of Fiction: a Reading of The Heir of Redclyffe 123 Chapter Four Typology and Realism in The Heir of Redclyffe 125 Chapter Five Realism, Utilitarianism and the Unconscious in The Heir of Redclyffe 157 Section Three Tractarianism, Feminism and the Nervous Female Body in Yonge's Domestic Fiction 213 Chapter Six Tractarian Feminism in Yonge 215 Chapter Seven Mesmerism, Tractarianism and Woman's Mission 249 Conclusion Feminism and the Supernatural in Yonge 287 Bibliography 303 Index 319