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The Chaplet of Pearls — cover
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Aeneas Press edition Victorian

The Chaplet of Pearls

by Charlotte M. Yonge 1823–1901

The book, and the century it came out of.

France, 1572: an English boy and a French girl are married as children to settle a lawsuit, and meet again as strangers in Paris in the week of St Bartholomew. Yonge lived her whole life in one Hampshire village and taught Sunday school for seventy-one years; she read the massacre in the sources and wrote it without either side becoming a monster, which is harder than it sounds and rarer than it should be. Illustrated with 58 full-page plates — paintings by Caron, van Valckenborch and Elder among them.

It is the fashion to call every story controversial that deals with times when controversy or a war of religion was raging; but it should be remembered that there are some which only attempt to portray human feelings as affected by the events that such warfare occasioned.
The first sentence of The Chaplet of Pearls
A note on this edition

The Chaplet of Pearls, 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 552 pages
Reading time
about 11 hours
Illustrations
Full-page plates, credited
Text
Complete, unabridged
Language
en
This edition
2026
ISBN
9785486670190
The plates

58 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.

The Massacres of the Triumvirate, Antoine Caron
The Massacres of the Triumvirate Antoine Caron 1566
The Family of Darius Before Alexander, Paolo Veronese
The Family of Darius Before Alexander Paolo Veronese 1565
A View on the Meuse with Miners, Lucas van Valckenborch
A View on the Meuse with Miners Lucas van Valckenborch 1576
Animals Grazing beneath Trees, Lucas van Valckenborch
Animals Grazing beneath Trees Lucas van Valckenborch 1573
Landscape with the Dawn of Civilisation, Cornelis van Dalem
Landscape with the Dawn of Civilisation Cornelis van Dalem 1560
Market Farmer and his Wife, Pieter Aertsen
Market Farmer and his Wife Pieter Aertsen 1561
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 The Chaplet of Pearls as set for this edition
The opening of a chapter
A page of The Chaplet of Pearls as set for this edition
A page where a plate falls

Both photographed from the finished volume.

Colophon

The Chaplet of Pearls, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Adventure & the Sea 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, 9785486670190, 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 The Chaplet of Pearls?
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 552 pages, which is roughly about 11 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
The Chaplet of Pearls
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