‘Working From Home’ Is Not Parochial: Charlotte Yonge’s Lifelong Involvement in Elementary Education

It is not easy to categorize Charlotte Yonge’s significance. Known mainly for her best-selling novel, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853) and as a peripheral member of the Oxford Movement, literary and historical scholars sometimes overlook the variety of her achievements, with her lifelong residence in Otterbourne taken as evidence of ‘an uneventful life’ (Georgina Battiscombe’s subtitle of her biography of Yonge). Employing Leslee Thorne-Murphy’s analysis of how Yonge’s authorship of The Heir provided her with a recognizable brand, I argue that Yonge had no need to leave her home-base in order to have considerable influence further afield and that there are similarities to present-day arguments about whether ‘Working from Home’ is really work. The central thread of Yonge’s life was her belief in education at many levels. By remaining in Otterbourne, Yonge could continue her close involvement with the parish schools while fulfilling a variety of roles that included editorship of the Monthly Packet, author of literary and historical novels, and writer of textbooks. Through her fiction she encouraged others to be equally proactive in their families and parishes. In no way did the centrality of her parochial interests mean that she was ‘narrow-minded or hidebound’ – new definitions of ‘parochial’ in 1856. Yonge understood the need to keep abreast of changing social conditions and when Forster’s Education Act (1870) introduced non-denominational Board Schools, she battled at a national level to defend the voluntary schools of the Church of England.