Skip to content
My Young Alcides — cover
Get your copy
Aeneas Press edition Victorian

My Young Alcides

A Faded Photograph

by Charlotte M. Yonge 1823–1901

The book, and the century it came out of.

A young giant of a man comes home from Australia to an English estate he has inherited, with a brother in tow and a family disgrace behind him — and the county has already decided what to think. Yonge lived her whole life in one Hampshire village and taught Sunday school there for seventy-one years; the Hercules of the title does his labours in a country parish, and the joke is entirely deliberate. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Creswick, Constable and Brown among them.

Ideas have a tyrannous power of insisting on being worked out, even when one fears they may be leading in a track already worthily preoccupied.
The first sentence of My Young Alcides
A note on this edition

My Young Alcides, by Charlotte M. Yonge, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.

It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.

The edition
Format
Ebook
Extent
about 296 pages
Reading time
about 6 hours
Illustrations
Full-page plates, credited
Text
Complete, unabridged
Language
en
This edition
2026
ISBN
9785501514218
The plates

60 paintings are bound into this edition

Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.

A Breezy Day on the English Coast, St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, Thomas Creswick
A Breezy Day on the English Coast, St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall Thomas Creswick 1866
Collecting the Offering in a Scottish Kirk, John Phillip
Collecting the Offering in a Scottish Kirk John Phillip 1855
The Garden Wall, Charles-François Daubigny
The Garden Wall Charles-François Daubigny 1869
The Forest of Fontainebleau, Narcisse Virgilio Díaz
The Forest of Fontainebleau Narcisse Virgilio Díaz 1867
Lonely Landscape (Peasants´ Wedding), Adolf Kosárek
Lonely Landscape (Peasants´ Wedding) Adolf Kosárek 1858
The Therese’s house, Émile Salomé
The Therese’s house Émile Salomé 1881
The setting

A page from this edition

Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.

A page of My Young Alcides as set for this edition
The opening of a chapter
A page of My Young Alcides as set for this edition
A page where a plate falls

Both photographed from the finished volume.

Colophon

My Young Alcides, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Love & Society shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.

Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501514218, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.

Before you buy

Questions readers ask

Is this the whole of My Young Alcides?
Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
What exactly did you change?
The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Charlotte M. Yonge's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
Are the pictures really in the book?
Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
How long is it?
About 296 pages, which is roughly about 6 hours of reading.
What do I actually get?
An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
If this one suits you
My Young Alcides
$6.99
Buy the ebook