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The Dove In The Eagle's Nest
The Dove In The Eagle's Nest By Charlotte M. Yonge
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1866
11 people are currently reading
112 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Mary Yonge
701 books69 followersCharlotte 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 12, 2018
3.5 stars- rounded down.
Set in the 15th century, this medieval tale reminded me of reading Ivanhoe in both language and style. A young girl, Christina, is taken from the shelter of her Uncle and Aunt who have raised her by a father she literally does not know. He takes her to a baronetcy perched in the Austrian alps to be a companion and nurse to an even younger girl who is the baron’s daughter. The place is so high and removed that it resembles an eagle’s aerie and Christina, a devout Christian, becomes a symbolic dove in the eagle’s nest.
Christina comes into this violent and coarse environment and, through her faith and goodness, affects changes that transform both the people and the system. This is a time of change generally in society as the independent barons are giving way to being governed by a Kaiser. The Adlersteins are among the last small group of what one wishes to call “ronin” rulers. The historical elements of the novel fascinate me, especially the role of women in Germanic society during this time. The religious elements are important but do not overshadow the progress of the story.
The story is multi-generational, following Christina’s story with that of her sons, Eberhard and Friedel. Considering the sometimes stilted language, the characters are amazingly absorbing. And, while the plot is sometimes a bit predictable, that is primarily because it is the kind of story people have found worthwhile to tell more than once.
One of the nice things about participating in the challenges in the Catching Up on Classics group is that I find myself reading books that would otherwise never make my list. This wasn’t anything like a favorite, but it was interesting and enjoyable, so I am glad to have read it.
Set in the 15th century, this medieval tale reminded me of reading Ivanhoe in both language and style. A young girl, Christina, is taken from the shelter of her Uncle and Aunt who have raised her by a father she literally does not know. He takes her to a baronetcy perched in the Austrian alps to be a companion and nurse to an even younger girl who is the baron’s daughter. The place is so high and removed that it resembles an eagle’s aerie and Christina, a devout Christian, becomes a symbolic dove in the eagle’s nest.
Christina comes into this violent and coarse environment and, through her faith and goodness, affects changes that transform both the people and the system. This is a time of change generally in society as the independent barons are giving way to being governed by a Kaiser. The Adlersteins are among the last small group of what one wishes to call “ronin” rulers. The historical elements of the novel fascinate me, especially the role of women in Germanic society during this time. The religious elements are important but do not overshadow the progress of the story.
The story is multi-generational, following Christina’s story with that of her sons, Eberhard and Friedel. Considering the sometimes stilted language, the characters are amazingly absorbing. And, while the plot is sometimes a bit predictable, that is primarily because it is the kind of story people have found worthwhile to tell more than once.
One of the nice things about participating in the challenges in the Catching Up on Classics group is that I find myself reading books that would otherwise never make my list. This wasn’t anything like a favorite, but it was interesting and enjoyable, so I am glad to have read it.
May 12, 2022
Good, but too pro Martin Luther
I really enjoyed this book, except for at the end there was some stuff at the end saying Martin Luther had "true Catholicism" which was very irritating. Besides that I liked it.
I really enjoyed this book, except for at the end there was some stuff at the end saying Martin Luther had "true Catholicism" which was very irritating. Besides that I liked it.
March 17, 2021
Why do more people not talk about this little gem of a book?! Wonderful morals. Precious story. So many hardships. I cried several times but such a redemptive end. Do yourself a favor and read this book immediately! There is some old time language and spelling in places but you can piece through those short parts. Well worth it.
March 17, 2021
Initially I felt frustrated that the medieval setting with it's eyrie fortress of unscrupulous barons was not given more description or atmosphere. Yonge gives us a morality/redemption tale with an adventurous plot. The characters, although they do improve, never really break off from being 'types' or moral examples. Young draws in, Maximilian I, as a side character and there are off stage references to and Luther; this grounds the time period of the novel, and adds a touch of reality to the temper the over dramatic parts. The dialogue is written a style meant to convey medieval (Germanic? Teutonic?) speech. It reads rather strangely with a lots of 'thee', 'hath', and 'motherling'. I think the latter was supposed to be a familial way of saying mother, which for modern readers has a patronising quality that becomes irritating the after the twentieth time you read it and after that has to be endured. In spite of all these defects the plot and the historical setting held my interest and I was invested enough in the characters to care what happened to them and read to the end. I don't know how the rest of Yonge's work compares with this one but I would try another of her novels.
August 24, 2018
Classic story of life in chivalrous times
Compelling story of a young, orphaned girl who is sent to care for a dying daughter of a rogue father and mother in a gothic like castle on a remote, nearly inaccessible mountain. There her life unfolds in a beautiful and yet at times painfully trying ways. She finds love and the faith of a good God who sees her through all. This book was hard to put down!
Compelling story of a young, orphaned girl who is sent to care for a dying daughter of a rogue father and mother in a gothic like castle on a remote, nearly inaccessible mountain. There her life unfolds in a beautiful and yet at times painfully trying ways. She finds love and the faith of a good God who sees her through all. This book was hard to put down!
March 6, 2025
Historical novel that probably should have been more enlightening than it was. I struggled to make it through the author's introduction (she assumes a knowledge of medieval Germany and church doctrine that is entirely lacking in my case) and I probably didn't read the parts of the story involving Maximilian I with as much care as I should have. I was more interested in the personal details of the story—Christina's marriage and the rearing of her sons—than in the historical aspect of it. Eventually, though, it all dragged on longer than I would have liked (there's a limit to the number of thee's and thou's I want to wade through). Interesting, but I've definitely read much better historical fiction.
August 18, 2025
I read this because I love Charlotte Mary Yonge's other books. I loved this one too because it was very different than her other books and the setting was interesting to me. While I probably wouldn't recommend this to others because most people don't enjoy this kind of tale because of the language it is told in, I whole heartedly enjoyed it. It does have archaic language but I found that the writing fit the story really well and emphasized the historical element as well as the feeling of being in a remote older part of the world like the eagles nest.
November 30, 2020
Not my favorite Yonge book, but it was touching nevertheless. Her stories are generally a bit melodramatic. The reason I love some of her books is because she bases her stories on a redemption tale. In this case, it is how a young woman of a religious merchant family helps to redeem a baronial family during an age when might made right. There are too few books about moral redemption. That's why I love Charlotte Yonge.
May 22, 2023
Probably a rollicking good tale when first published almost 200 years ago, it is now a slow read that reminds one of Ivanhoe at times. Set is southwestern German-speaking lands in the 15th century, it is the tale of a noble family with the usual blood feuds, class tensions, surprise survivals, and both moral and terrible behavior. It is sometimes slow and hard to follow, but it was an interesting read for its good portrayal of the era as we understand it.
August 18, 2017
Good story but hard to get past the language and phrasing. Nice glimpse of German history.
November 30, 2016
Christina Sorel, saintly heroine of this mostly uneventful and underwhelming historical novel set in the rocky reaches of Austria in the 15th century, is abandoned as a baby by her mercenary father to be brought up by his lowly brother, a carpenter.
When the father suddenly returns she is sixteen and finally of use to him, so he takes her with him to attend a sick maiden and gain favor with his master, the robber baron Freiherr von Adlerstein.
Adlerstein is one of a dying breed, tenaciously holding onto his own remote territory as Maximilian I was forcibly uniting an empire, freeing it from the random tyranny of Faust Recht ('fist right').
Christina is frightened of him and his boorish son Eberhard, but finds that she exerts an unlikely influence on the latter, initially through 'the low-toned softness of (her) voice, so utterly different from the shrill wrangling notes of all the other women he had known'.
In her introduction Yonge explains how a great part of her aim in this novel was to illustrate the 'contrast between the cultivation in the free cities and the savagery of the independent barons' at that time and place in history.
However, for the rough times and the lawless environment of those disputed baronial border territories it's an impossibly soft story, awash in pious sentimentality.
As if that isn't failure enough, the twin sons of Christina and Eberhard, figures supposedly brave and heroic, prove to be a couple of cringingly insipid mummy's boys in need of a good clip round the ear.
Their interminable use of irritatingly arcane appellations when addressing their "motherling" near drove me out of my mind, e.g., "Do not wake the mother. It must be ere she or aught else be astir!"
Yonge wrote many novels and was a popular and respected writer in her time, but I could find little evidence for that here.
When the father suddenly returns she is sixteen and finally of use to him, so he takes her with him to attend a sick maiden and gain favor with his master, the robber baron Freiherr von Adlerstein.
Adlerstein is one of a dying breed, tenaciously holding onto his own remote territory as Maximilian I was forcibly uniting an empire, freeing it from the random tyranny of Faust Recht ('fist right').
Christina is frightened of him and his boorish son Eberhard, but finds that she exerts an unlikely influence on the latter, initially through 'the low-toned softness of (her) voice, so utterly different from the shrill wrangling notes of all the other women he had known'.
In her introduction Yonge explains how a great part of her aim in this novel was to illustrate the 'contrast between the cultivation in the free cities and the savagery of the independent barons' at that time and place in history.
However, for the rough times and the lawless environment of those disputed baronial border territories it's an impossibly soft story, awash in pious sentimentality.
As if that isn't failure enough, the twin sons of Christina and Eberhard, figures supposedly brave and heroic, prove to be a couple of cringingly insipid mummy's boys in need of a good clip round the ear.
Their interminable use of irritatingly arcane appellations when addressing their "motherling" near drove me out of my mind, e.g., "Do not wake the mother. It must be ere she or aught else be astir!"
Yonge wrote many novels and was a popular and respected writer in her time, but I could find little evidence for that here.
December 12, 2023
Writing towards the close of the Victorian century, Charlotte M Yonge was driven, like so many of her contemporaries, to “educate, elevate, and inspire” young people and, unfortunately, her inferiors in station: servants. This novel, while keeping to those aims, is set in a semi-barbaric German setting among the Swabian Alps, during the reign of the unruly independent barony who refused allegiance to king or pope, and who were literally the robber barons of romance. The setting and the historic details are very evocative, and probably accurate, since Mrs Yonge cites chapter and verse.
The story itself is about how one baronial stronghold eventually submitted to the Church and the King by becoming part of the Swabian League, thanks to the efforts of a pure young Christian girl from a burgomaster household imported into the noble family to tend a sick child. While the characterisation is black and white, the story itself is well constructed and lends itself to both suspense and interest. Chief however, is the message of Christian piety that is the hallmark of a Charlotte M Yonge novel, delivered with so much saccharine that the very real merits of the book are completely obscured.
The story itself is about how one baronial stronghold eventually submitted to the Church and the King by becoming part of the Swabian League, thanks to the efforts of a pure young Christian girl from a burgomaster household imported into the noble family to tend a sick child. While the characterisation is black and white, the story itself is well constructed and lends itself to both suspense and interest. Chief however, is the message of Christian piety that is the hallmark of a Charlotte M Yonge novel, delivered with so much saccharine that the very real merits of the book are completely obscured.
July 20, 2016
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OceanPearl Books - Book Review
A neglectful father appears one day and demands his daughter’s services. He takes his daughter, Christina, by force from her adoptive parents in order to take care of an ailing lord’s daughter. Christina displays unparalleled bravery by settling in the prison like castle, facing vulgar customs, and being a nurse to girl her own age.
Yonge has an eye for detail. Her vision of the ancient Germany’s mountain ranges, castles nested and secluded play at the backdrop of this picturesque novel. Christina is portrayed as a saint, when she gives everything to the castle community and yet gains nothing in return.
This book is available for FREE at http://manybooks.net/titles/yongechae....
Rating: 3/5
OceanPearl Books - Book Review
A neglectful father appears one day and demands his daughter’s services. He takes his daughter, Christina, by force from her adoptive parents in order to take care of an ailing lord’s daughter. Christina displays unparalleled bravery by settling in the prison like castle, facing vulgar customs, and being a nurse to girl her own age.
Yonge has an eye for detail. Her vision of the ancient Germany’s mountain ranges, castles nested and secluded play at the backdrop of this picturesque novel. Christina is portrayed as a saint, when she gives everything to the castle community and yet gains nothing in return.
This book is available for FREE at http://manybooks.net/titles/yongechae....
Rating: 3/5
July 11, 2008
I heard that Charlotte Yonge's books were very good, and was disappointed. It reminds me rather of an Elsie Dinsmore book. Unlike Elsie, the heroine makes mistakes, but the book seems to focus on her morality and virtue rather than a plot, or drawing the reader to Christ. The plot is good, even intriguing, but it all goes to reveal the "exemplary" character of the heroine. If you like the Elsie books, you may like this even more. It is an enjoyable book, but if you think a well-written story should offer something more substantial to the reader that an example of wonderful character, you may be disappointed, as I was. Overall, with the setting, the medieval time period, and the drama, it is an enjoyable read.
May 30, 2013
I like Charlotte Yonge's stories even though they seem antiquated insofar as language is concerned but the medieval history it contains fascinates me. Lovely to have them free for Kindle!
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November 1, 20161 NOV 2016 - find it here - Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3139
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews