The Daisy Chain [Paperback]

Charlotte M. Yonge (Author), Diana Birchall (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 18, 2009

The Daisy Chain (1856) by Charlotte M. Yonge is a popular and beloved British Victorian novel chronicling the lives, loves, and aspirations of the many delightful members of a middle-class, provincial family, the Mays.

Charlotte M. Yonge was a widely read and appreciated author with quintessentially Victorian sensibilities. Not as well known in our time as her literary contemporaries Dickens and Trollope, she may perhaps be the most delightful secret to be rediscovered by a whole new generation of readers.

This edition includes a new introduction by acclaimed author Diana Birchall.

Product Details

• Paperback: 724 pages
• Publisher: Norilana Books (November 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1607620529
• ISBN-13: 978-1607620525
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,028,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate Victorian experience!, April 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Daisy Chain (Virago Modern Classics) (Paperback)

If you really want to know what life in Victorian England was like, read Charlotte Yonge's novels, just like everyone else used to. The Daisy Chain remained on the "must read" list of every English family well into the 1950's. Clothing, manners, morality, faith, love, death, sorrow, combine with a lot of fun, humor, and an unbelievably large family into one of the best experiences of time-travel for pedestrians ever. Not to mention you get to meet Ethel and Dr. May. Read it. You'll see what I mean.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars louisa may alcott vs. cardinal newman, August 19, 2011

By 

Jessica Nauright - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Daisy Chain (Paperback)

I would like to add another review for this excellent book. I ended up reading it after I randomly bought 'The Trial' in a used book store--that book (also very good) is sort of the sequel to this one, though sort of not. (I mean Charlotte Yonge's book, not Kafka's, haha.) But anyway: 'The Daisy Chain' is fun, especially if you were (even slightly) the kind of romantic lonely kid who daydreamed about life in one of these huge Victorian families. But it is also pretty interesting prose sometimes (I have since been noticing how many citations from Charlotte Yonge there are in the OED), and even better, the characters all come across as idiosyncratic, non-stereotyped, psychologically real people.

It is also intensely didactic, which has prevented me from recommending it to very many people, which is a shame. Because it's a kind of fraught and learned didacticism where people really suffer and have conversations about things like 'scrupulosity.' (George Eliot was a fan.)