author
Charles Duke Yonge
1812–1891
A hardworking Victorian scholar, translator, and historian, he helped bring Greek and Roman writers to a wide English readership. He also had an unexpected second life in print as a chronicler of modern history and constitutional politics.
2 Audiobooks
The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France
by Charles Duke Yonge
The Constitutional History of England from 1760 to 1860
by Charles Duke Yonge
About the author
Born at Eton on November 30, 1812, Charles Duke Yonge was an English historian, classicist, and translator. He became especially known for producing English versions of major classical authors, including Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Philo, along with a large body of historical writing.
He studied at Eton and St John's College, Oxford, and later held the chair of modern history and English literature at Queen's College, Belfast. Alongside his scholarly work, he was also remembered as a cricketer, an unusual detail that gives his career a little extra color.
Yonge died on November 30, 1891. His books reflect the wide-ranging energy of a 19th-century man of letters: part teacher, part translator, and part historian, always busy turning difficult texts and big stretches of history into something ordinary readers could approach.