Edith Sichel

“ In 1835, Keble's appointment to the living of Hursley (to which the parish of Otterbourne was then joined) brought into Charlotte's life a dominant influence. Keble imbued her with his enthusiasm for the Oxford movement. During 1837–9 she saw much of him and his wife, while her father was in constant communication with him over the building of Otterbourne church. Keble quickly discovered Miss Yonge's gifts and urged her to bring home to the uneducated, no less than to the educated, the tenets of his faith in the form of fiction. ”

“ Charlotte was brought up on her parents' little estate at Otterbourne, where her father, an earnest churchman and a magistrate, interested himself in the church and the parochial schools, then a new feature in English villages. An only girl, she paid yearly visits to her many Yonge cousins in Devonshire. According to her own account, she was born clumsy, inaccurate, inattentive, and at no time of her life could she keep accounts. Most of her education was derived from her father, who believed in higher education for women but deprecated any liberty for them. ”

“ Miss Yonge's literary work and religious worship formed her life. She taught Scripture daily in the village school, and attended service morning and evening in Otterbourne Church. She lived and died untroubled by religious doubts and ignored books of sceptical tendency. Workmen's institutes she condemned in one of her stories because the geological lectures given there imperilled religion. She only once travelled out of England, in 1869, when she visited Guizot and his daughter Madame de Witt, at Val Richer, near Lisieux in Normandy. ”