“The Angel in the Circulating Library”: Gender and the Reception of Charlotte Yonge’s The Heir of Redclyffe

Abstract

When The Heir of Redclyffe appeared anonymously in 1853, it received little immediate critical attention. By the summer of 1854, however, Yonge’s novel had become one of the best-selling novels of the century. Although The Heir of Redclyffe was not widely reviewed in 1853, reviewers made up for this omission in 1854 when their discussion of Yonge’s follow-up novel, Heartsease, included sustained retrospective consideration of The Heir of Redclyffe.¹