Establishing Identity: Editorial Correspondence from the Early Years of The Monthly Packet

Establishing Identity:

Editorial Correspondence from the Early Years of The Monthly Packet

"I wish anyone could tell us what the cost of starting a magazine would be," the novelist Charlotte Mary Yonge wrote to her friend Marianne Dyson in 1850.¹ A few months later, in January 1851, the magazine she had in mind, The Monthly Packet, began publication, with the twenty-nine year old Yonge as editor, a position she was to hold for more than 40 years.² The Monthly Packet was, as its first editorial proclaimed, primarily designed for a readership of "young girls, or maidens, or young ladies, whatever you like to be called."³ Its aims were frankly and unashamedly didactic:

Above all it is the especial desire and prayer of those who address you through the pages of this Magazine that what you may find there may tend to make you more steadfast and dutiful daughters of our own beloved Catholic church in England, and may go alongside in all respects with the teaching, both doctrinal and practical, of the Prayer Book. For we live in a time of more than ordinary trial and our middle path seems to have grown narrower than ever.⁴

The full title of the periodical indicates this mission: The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Younger Members of the English Church. Yonge was not merely a devout Anglican but a friend and pupil of John Keble, one of the founders of the Tractarian movement. She started the magazine to represent to young adults the views of the intensely traditionalist Tractarian group.⁵ The Monthly Packet certainly had a large measure of success, in that it survived for much longer than most religious periodicals and eventually acquired a considerable degree of general esteem as well as a loyal readership. Yonge observes wryly in 1869: "The Illustrated News is so good as to say that but for its sectarian quality The Monthly Packet would take a high rank among magazines."⁶ She adds, tellingly, that she intends to retain but not to augment this quality.

The Monthly Packet's introductory editorial announced the proposed contents of future issues as including "cameos" from history, "stories of our own days," biography, translations, and extracts from "books that are not likely to come your way or of which the whole may not be desirable reading for you." The actual contents of the first issue included, among other items, "Cameos from History," "Conversations on the Catechism," and the first installment of an historical novel, The Little Duke – all substantial pieces, all parts of series, and, significantly, all written by Yonge herself.⁷ In these early days, especially, she was through necessity her own chief contributor and she seems to have been anxious about finding enough material to fill the magazine (which consisted of 80 pages per monthly issue with no illustrations). She writes rather desperately to a friend, "You really must beg, borrow or steal something to help me . . . if you can send me something, I think we could meet the first of January – but I am sure I cannot single-handed"⁸ She did "meet the first of January" for that first issue and 300–odd later deadlines, eventually, with a dependable and quite distinguished band of regular contributors. Through the inevitable difficulties of the first few years, her editorial persona rapidly emerged. Despite these early anxieties over the lack of contributions, Yonge was from the beginning extremely careful in her editorial decisions. This care is evident in a series of 39 letters (now in the Huntington Library) to one of her earliest contributors, Elizabeth P. Roberts, a decidedly minor figure on the literary scene.⁹ These letters form the basis of this essay. They date from the years 1851–1860, the first nine years of the magazine's existence, and replied to submissions and accompanied proofs and payments, but they are by no means merely form letters...