Kingsley, Charles

Charles Kingsley was born on June 12, 1819 at Holne Vicarage in Dartmoor. He is perhaps best known for writing the children's classic The Water Babies (1863). Among his other popular works were Alton Locke (1850), Hypatia (1853), and Westward Ho! (1855). Kingsley is most often remembered for his controversial views on sexuality and manliness, proselytized through the rhetoric of “muscular Christianity,” a narrative deployed by Christian socialists like Kingsley and the reverend F. D. Maurice. The standard edition of Kingsley's works is Macmillan's twenty‐eight‐volume The Works of Charles Kingsley (1879–1885). In this collection, however, there are many lectures, pamphlets, sermons, novels, plays and poems that have failed to attract critical attention. Kingsley was one of the most prolific writers of the nineteenth century, and yet the breadth of his work is rarely acknowledged. This entry provides a starting point from which to develop an understanding of the true scope of Kingsley's work.