Author
Charles Kingsley
1819-1875
English clergyman, social reformer, historian and novelist, remembered for the children's fairy tale The Water-Babies and for historical novels such as Westward Ho!
Charles Kingsley was born on 12 June 1819 in Holne, Devon, the elder son of the Reverend Charles Kingsley, and spent his childhood in Clovelly, Devon, where his father was curate and then rector, and at Barnack in Northamptonshire. His brother Henry and sister Charlotte also became writers. After King's College London he went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating first class in classics in 1842.
He chose the priesthood, and in 1844 became Rector of Eversley in Hampshire. A broad church clergyman, he is associated with Christian socialism and the working men's college, and he was highly critical of Roman Catholicism: his attack in print on John Henry Newman prompted Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua. He became chaplain to Queen Victoria in 1859 and Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in 1860. A friend of Charles Darwin, he was one of the first to welcome On the Origin of Species.
His novels include Yeast (1848), Alton Locke (1850), Hypatia (1853) and Westward Ho! (1855), and his chief strength as a novelist lay in describing places. The Water-Babies (1863), a tale about a boy chimney sweep first written for his son Grenville, shows his concern for social reform and even touches on the scientific debate over human origins. It kept its popularity well into the 20th century. He also retold Greek myths for children in The Heroes (1856).
Kingsley died of pneumonia at Eversley on 23 January 1875, aged 55, and was buried in the churchyard there.
Sources: wikipedia.org
