The Pillars of the House, Or Under Wode, Under Rode Volume 1-2

by Charlotte Mary Yonge

This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for kindle devices. We have endeavoured to create this version as close to the original artefact as possible. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we believe they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Genres: Classics, Fiction

769 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1873

About the author

Charlotte Mary Yonge was an English novelist, known for her huge output, now mostly out of print.

She began writing in 1848, and published during her long life about 160 works, chiefly novels. Her first commercial success, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), 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. Yonge was also a founder and editor for forty years of The Monthly Packet, a magazine (founded in 1851) with a varied readership, but targeted at British Anglican girls (in later years it was addressed to a somewhat wider readership).

Among the best known of her works are The Heir of Redclyffe, Heartsease, and The Daisy Chain. A Book of Golden Deeds is a collection of true stories of courage and self-sacrifice. She also wrote Cameos from English History, Life of John Coleridge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands and Hannah More. Her History of Christian Names was described as "the first serious attempt at tackling the subject" and as the standard work on names in the preface to the first edition of Withycombe's The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 1944.

Her personal example and influence on her god-daughter, Alice Mary Coleridge, played a formative role in Coleridge's zeal for women's education and thus, indirectly, led to the foundation of Abbots Bromley School for Girls.

After her death, her friend, assistant and collaborator, Christabel Coleridge, published the biographical Charlotte Mary Yonge: her Life and Letters (1903).

-Wikipedia

The Charlotte Mary Yonge Fellowship, a website with lots of information.

See Charlotte's character page for books about her.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the stars!!!! This is easily a contender for my favorite book of the year. I hope to write more soon.

[Melynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this long domestic novel detailing the non-adventures of 12 orphaned children. (I take that back--one of them gets to the U.S., where he is scalped during an Indian raid. Other than that, though, they lead a pretty quiet life.)

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't praise this massive book enough. I was totally absorbed in the lives of this long family, left in the care of the eldest two (the 'pillars' of the title). They are not all paragons - mistakes and misjudgements are made and paid dearly for. It's not for you if you don't like upfront Christianity in your novels, though. And be warned, there are some real tear-jerker moments - Miss Yonge makes Dickens seem like an amateur when it comes to Last Moments. I'm relishing the prospect of reading more of her work.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started Pillars of the House at a friend's suggestion back in September. I tried (and dismally failed at) reading it quickly with her group…it took me 6 months!

And I am not sad about that! This is a bildungsroman of epic proportions, and it is masterfully done. Usually we get the growth and evolution of a single character, but here we have the almost-lifespan growth of an entire family of ten kids! Think Little Women, but instead it’s Little Huge Family. Yes it’s didactic, yes it’s long as heck, but I promise you will fall in love with this family.

I will definitely be reading more from Charlotte Mary Yonge. I’m going to miss reading about the Underwoods every day—it felt like she knew her characters as real people.

[John Woolley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This (very long) novel is probably Miss Yonge's greatest, a "family chronicle" rather like her "The Daisy Chain". (And indeed, some of the characters from "The Daisy Chain" and "The Trial" show up in "The Pillars of the House".) There's plot enough here for six or eight "regular" novels -- a huge slice of Victorian life, all about love and faith, birth and death and illness, religion and honesty and growing up, work and promises and character and art and music. This isn't one of the eight or ten greatest novels in English, but it'd probably make a careful best-100 list. Just wonderful.

[Shelagh Smethurst · Rating 1 out of 5]

Half novel half religious tract. Interminable.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very long book in two volumes that draws one into the lives of a family growing up in England after losing both parents. The pillars are two teenagers, older brother and sister, who lead the rest of the large family through perhaps one to two decades. The book is difficult to start because the family is so large it is hard to keep everyone straight. But by the end of the book you care deeply about each of the main persons in the story. The ending is has great beauty and sadness, in a painful but not depressing way.

[Mhairi Gowans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent domestic tear jerker by Charlotte Yonge. Despite the deep religiosity that pervades most of the story, she writes her characters so extremely well that you have to read on to find out what happens to them.

A must read for anyone who loves classic literature.

[Sarahthe1001 · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like Victorian family sagas, and find Anglo-Catholicism to be literary catnip, this is the book for you.