Kingsley, CHARLES, born at Holne vicarage, Dartmoor, Devon, 12th June 1819. After education partly at King's College, London, he went up to Magdalen College, Cambridge, and took his degree in 1842—first-class in classics, senior optime in mathematics—and was immediately ordained to the curacy of Eversley in Hampshire, of which parish he became rector in 1844. There he lived for the remainder of his life, having married a daughter of Mr Pascoe Grenfell in the year in which he was presented to his living.
His dramatic poem, The Saint's Tragedy, or The True Story of Elizabeth of Hungary, an 'admirable representation of medieval piety,' appeared in 1848, and was immediately followed by two works of a very different character, Alton Locke and Yeast, both published in 1849. These brilliant novels are the work of a Radical, a 'Christian Socialist,' and deal with modern social questions in a bold and a strikingly original manner. The hero of Alton Locke, 'tailor and poet,' is found in a London workshop. In Yeast the condition of the English agricultural labourer is dealt with by one whose sympathy with the people is aristocratic, not democratic, whose radicalism is Christian, and not sceptical, whose enthusiasm never degenerates into unreason, and whose most brilliant invective is always balanced by common sense. The influence of these books at the time was enormous; and if Kingsley wrote nothing more of the same character, it was not so much that time had modified his views as that his views had modified the times. For two or three years previous to the publication of these novels Kingsley had thrown himself with all the ardour of youth and of his own impetuous nature into various schemes for the improvement of the condition, material, moral, and religious, of the working-classes, a subject of which we all hear a good deal at the present day, but which was somewhat strange in 1844. In this work he was associated with Mr Maurice, the recognised leader of the movement known as 'Christian Socialism;' and he published under the well-known pseudonym of 'Parson Lot' an immense number of articles on current topics, especially in the Christian Socialist and Politics for the People. In 1853 appeared Hypatia, one of his most fascinating works, a vigorous and brilliant picture of early Christianity in conflict with Greek philosophy at Alexandria in the beginning of the 5th century. Westward Ho! followed in 1855, and the presentment of Elizabethan England and the Spanish Main, of Devonshire worthies and their Spanish foemen, is as lifelike as anything to be found in the whole range of romantic literature. The tone of the book is hearty, English, Protestant, free, and, like the author himself, at once strong and tender. In Two Years Ago (1857) he sketched with a master hand the North Devon scenery so dear to the west countryman; and Hereward the Wake (1866), a novel of the days of the Conqueror, brought the noble series of works of fiction to a close. In 1860 the university of Cambridge had chosen the author of Hypatia and Westward Ho! to be professor of History, and his inaugural lecture was published at the end of that year under the title of The Limits of Exact Science as applied to History. The Roman and the Teuton (1864) is also based upon his Cambridge lectures.
In 1869 Kingsley resigned his professorship and was appointed a canon of Chester; and in 1871 he made the voyage that he had so long contemplated, to the tropics, of whose scenery he had already written so enthusiastically; and on his return to Eversley from the West Indies he gave to the world one of its most charming books of travel, At Last. In 1873 Kingsley was appointed a canon of Westminster and chaplain to the Queen. He died at Eversley on 23d January 1875. His Life, by his widow, in 2 vols. published in 1876, is a biography of deep and sustained interest. Kingsley was by nature hot-tempered, enthusiastic, and combative, yet infinitely sympathetic and tender of heart; his 'muscular Christianity' (a phrase he disliked) was cheerful and robust; he had great and varied information, a keen wit, and a mind's eye that ever looked below the surface. His collected works fill 28 volumes (1879-81). Among these, besides those already named, and many volumes of sermons, are Glanucus (1854), The Heroes (1856), The Water Babies (1863), Town Geology (1872), Prosc Idylls (1873), Health and Education (1874). Of a sixpenny edition of the chief books (1889-90) millions were sold.