Beechcroft at Rockstone

Two aunts in a seaside town take charge of three nieces and a nephew while their mother goes out to India, and the three of them proceed to test every arrangement the household has. Yonge lived her whole life in one Hampshire village, taught Sunday school there for seventy-one years and gave away the profits of her books. She wrote for families to read together and assumed the children would be the sharper half of the audience. Fifty-eight plates from Frith and Tissot, spanning 1812 to 1929, picture the social comedy of courtship, family and class that Yonge's sharp-eyed household drama plays out.