Absorbing, moving, and intricately plotted, The Daisy Chain is Yonge's best-known novel; this edition will provide the 21st century reader with a comprehensive education in Victorian culture, not to mention a tremendously satisfying reading experience.

Charlotte Mary Yonge's Victorian bestseller is a domestic story, a novel of female education, and a detailed survey of the controversies and practices of High Church Anglicanism in the 19th century. Its portrayal of the bookish, awkward heroine, Ethel May, paved the way for stories of literary heroines like Jo March and Anne Shirley, and its emphasis on the domestic life of the May family illuminates the Victorian doctrine of separate spheres, the seemingly contradictory gender politics of the Woman Question, and the relationship between religion and the rights of women in the 19th century.  - Kelly Hager, Simmons College.

About the Author: 

Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901), was an English novelist, known for her huge output. She was devoted to the Church of England, and much influenced by John Keble, a near neighbour and one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Her novels reflected the values and concerns of Anglo-Catholicism. 

She began writing in 1848, and published during her long life about 100 works, chiefly novels. Her first commercial success, The Heir of Redclyffe (1854), provided the funding to enable the schooner Southern Cross to be put into service on behalf of George Selwyn. Similar charitable works were done with the profits from later novels. She was also editor, for nearly forty years, of a magazine for young ladies, the Monthly Packet. Among the best known of her works are Heartsease; or, The Brother's Wife (1854), The Daisy Chain; or, Aspirations (1856), A History of Christian Names (1863, revised 1884), A Book of Golden Deeds (1864), The Dove in the Eagle's Nest (1866), Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands (1873) and Hannah More (1888).