First published in 1865, The Clever Woman of the Family is one of Charlotte M. Yonge's most ambitious Victorian novels, examining what happens when intelligence, idealism and moral certainty collide with the practical realities of family and community life.

Through the determined Rachel Curtis, Yonge explores questions of women's education, philanthropy, duty, ambition and social reform, creating a heroine who is strikingly more complicated than the conventional Victorian ideal. Rather than simply rewarding virtue, the novel asks what responsibility accompanies knowledge, and whether good intentions alone can justify intervention in the lives of others.

Although enormously popular in the nineteenth century, Yonge has largely slipped from view, making Virago's Modern Classics edition part of an important project of literary rediscovery. Read today, the novel sits somewhere between Jane Austen's moral acuity and George Eliot's psychological seriousness, while anticipating later feminist debates about women's work, authority and public life. It's an absorbing choice for readers interested in Victorian literature beyond the established canon, particularly those curious about the intellectual history of women's writing.

1986 Penguin Virago Modern Classics paperback. Light shelf wear with a clean, unmarked interior and a firm binding.