Charles Kingsley - Wikipedia Charles Kingsley From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search English clergyman, historian and novelist For the British yacht designer, see Charles Kingsley (yacht designer). For the English tennis player, see Charles Kingsley (tennis). The Reverend Charles Kingsley Born (1819-06-12)12 June 1819 Holne, Devon, England Died 23 January 1875(1875-01-23) (aged 55) Eversley, Hampshire, England Occupation Clergyman, historian, novelist Nationality English Alma mater King's College London Magdalene College, Cambridge Period 19th century Genre Social Christianity Literary movement Christian socialism Spouse Frances Eliza Grenfell Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875) was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, the working men's college, and forming labour cooperatives, which failed, but encouraged later working reforms. He was a friend and correspondent of Charles Darwin.[1] Contents 1 Life and character 2 Death 3 Influences and works 4 Racial views 4.1 Anglo-Saxonism 4.2 Dislike of the Irish 5 Legacy 6 Published works 7 References 7.1 Citations 7.2 Sources 8 Further reading 9 External links Life and character[edit] Caricature by Adriano Cecioni published in Vanity Fair in 1872. Kingsley was born in Holne, Devon, the elder son of the Reverend Charles Kingsley and his wife, Mary Lucas Kingsley. His brother Henry Kingsley (1830–1876) and sister Charlotte Chanter (1828–1882) also became writers. He was the father of the novelist Lucas Malet (Mary St. Leger Kingsley, 1852–1931) and the uncle of the traveller and scientist Mary Kingsley (1862–1900). Charles Kingsley's childhood was spent in Clovelly, Devon, where his father was Curate in 1826–1832 and Rector in 1832–1836,[2] and at Barnack, Northamptonshire. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Helston Grammar School[3] before studying at King's College London and the University of Cambridge. Charles entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1838, and graduated in 1842.[4] He chose to pursue priesthood in the Anglican Church. In 1844 he became Rector of Eversley in Hampshire. In 1859 he was appointed chaplain to Queen Victoria.[5][6] In 1860, he became Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge,[5][6] and in 1861 a private tutor to the Prince of Wales.[5] In 1869 Kingsley resigned his Cambridge professorship and in 1870–1873 served as a canon of Chester Cathedral. While there, he founded the Chester Society for Natural Science, Literature and Art, which was prominent in the establishment of the Grosvenor Museum.[7] In 1872 he agreed to become the 19th President of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.[8] In 1873 he was made a canon of Westminster Abbey.[5] Kingsley sat on the 1866 Edward Eyre Defence Committee along with Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, John Tyndall, and Alfred Tennyson, where he supported Jamaican Governor Edward Eyre's brutal suppression of the Morant Bay Rebellion against the Jamaica Committee. One of his daughters, Mary St Leger Kingsley, became known as a novelist under the pseudonym Lucas Malet.[6] Kingsley's biography, written by his widow in 1877, was entitled Charles Kingsley, his Letters and Memories of his Life.[6] Kingsley received letters from Thomas Huxley in 1860 and in 1863 letters discussing Huxley's early ideas on agnosticism. Death[edit] Charles Kingsley died of pneumonia on 23 January 1875 at Eversley, Hampshire, aged 55. He was buried there in St. Mary's Churchyard.[9] Influences and works[edit] Kingsley's interest in history is shown in several of his writings, including The Heroes (1856), a children's book about Greek mythology, and several historical novels, of which the best known are Hypatia (1853), Hereward the Wake (1865) and Westward Ho! (1855). Kingsley He was sympathetic to the idea of evolution and was one of the first to welcome Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species. He had been sent an advance review copy and in his response of 18 November 1859 (four days before the book went on sale) stated that he had "long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species."[10] Darwin added an edited version of Kingsley's closing remarks to the next edition of his book, stating, "A celebrated author and divine has written to me that 'he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.'"[11] When a heated dispute lasting three years developed over human evolution, Kingsley gently satirised the debate, known as the Great Hippocampus Question, as the "Great Hippopotamus Question". Kingsley's concern for social reform is illustrated in his classic, The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863), a tale about a boy chimney sweep, which retained its popularity well into the 20th century. The story mentions the main protagonists in the scientific debate over human origins, rearranging his earlier satire as the "great hippopotamus test". The book won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1963. Kingsley's chief asset as a novelist lay in his descriptive faculties: the descriptions of South American scenery in Westward Ho!, of the Egyptian desert in Hypatia, and of the North Devon scenery in Two Years Ago. American scenery is vividly and truthfully described (despite Kingsley having seen it only in his imagination) in his work At Last, written after he had visited the tropics. His sympathy with children taught him how to gain their interest. His version of the old Greek stories entitled The Heroes, and Water-babies and Madam How and Lady Why, in which he deals with popular natural history, take high rank among books for children.[6] Kingsley was influenced by Frederick Denison Maurice, and was close to many Victorian thinkers and writers, including the Scottish writer George MacDonald. Kingsley was highly critical of Roman Catholicism and his argument in print with John Henry Newman, accusing him of untruthfulness and deceit, prompted the latter to write his Apologia Pro Vita Sua.[12] Kingsley also wrote poetry and political articles, as well as several volumes of sermons. Kingsley coined the term pteridomania in his 1855 book Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore.[13] Racial views[edit] Anglo-Saxonism[edit] Kingsley was a fervent Anglo-Saxonist,[14] and was seen as a major proponent of the ideology, particularly in the 1840s.[15] He proposed that the English people were "essentially a Teutonic race, blood-kin to the Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians".[16] Kingsley suggested there was a "strong Norse element in Teutonism and Anglo-Saxonism". Mixing mythology and Christianity, he blended Protestantism as it was practised at the time with the Old Norse religion, saying that the Church of England was "wonderfully and mysteriously fitted for the souls of a free Norse-Saxon race". He believed the ancestors of Anglo-Saxons, Norse and Germanic peoples had physically fought beside the god Odin, and that the British monarchy was genetically descended from the god.[17] Dislike of the Irish[edit] Kingsley has been accused of intensely antagonistic views of the Irish,[12] whom he described in derogatory terms.[18][19] Visiting County Sligo in Ireland, he wrote a letter to his wife from Markree Castle in 1860: "I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country [Ireland]... [for] to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours."[20][21] Legacy[edit] A statue of Charles Kingsley at Bideford, Devon (UK) Charles Kingsley's novel Westward Ho! led to the founding of a village by the same name (the only place name in England with an exclamation mark) and inspired the construction of the Bideford, Westward Ho! and Appledore Railway. A hotel in Westward Ho! was named after and opened by him. A hotel which was opened in 1897 in Bloomsbury, London, and named after Kingsley was founded by teetotallers, who admired Kingsley for his political views and his ideas on social reform. It still exists as The Kingsley by Thistle.[22] In 1905 the composer Cyril Rootham wrote a musical setting of Kingsley's poem Andromeda. This was performed at the Bristol Music Festival in 1908. Like Kingsley, Rootham had been educated at Bristol Grammar School.[23] Published works[edit] Yeast, a novel (1848) Saint's Tragedy (1848), a drama Alton Locke, a novel (1849) Twenty-five Village Sermons (1849) Cheap Clothes and Nasty (1850) Phaeton, or Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers (1852) Sermons on National Subjects (1st series, 1852) Hypatia, a novel (1853) Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore (1855) Sermons on National Subjects (2nd series, 1854) Alexandria and her Schools (1854) Westward Ho!, a novel (1855) Sermons for the Times (1855) The Heroes, Greek fairy tales (1856) Two Years Ago, a novel (1857) Andromeda and other Poems (1858) The Good News of God, sermons (1859) Miscellanies (1859) Limits of Exact Science applied to History (Inaugural lectures, 1860) Town and Country Sermons (1861) Sermons on the Pentateuch (1863) The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863) The Roman and the Teuton (1864) David and other Sermons (1866) Hereward the Wake: "Last of the English", a novel (London: Macmillan, 1866) The Ancient Régime (Lectures at the Royal Institution, 1867) Water of Life and other Sermons (1867) The Hermits (1869) Madam How and Lady Why (1869) At Last: a Christmas in the West Indies (1871) Town Geology (1872) Discipline and other Sermons (1872) Prose Idylls (1873) Plays and Puritans (1873) Health and Education (1874) Westminster Sermons (1874) Lectures delivered in America (1875)[6] References[edit] Citations[edit] ^ Hale, Piers J. (2011). "Darwin's Other Bulldog: Charles Kingsley and the Popularisation of Evolution in Victorian England" (PDF). Science & Education. 21 (7): 977–1013. doi:10.1007/s11191-011-9414-8. ISSN 0926-7220. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. ^ William Griggs, A Guide to All Saints Church, Clovelly, first published 1980, Revised Version 2010, p. 7. ^ Vance, Norman. "Kingsley, Charles (1819–1875)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15617. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) ^ "Kingsley, Charles (KNGY838C)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge. ^ a b c d Krueger, Christine L. (2014). Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Centuries. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-0870-4. ^ a b c d e f   Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kingsley, Charles". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 817. ^ "Information Sheet: Charles Kingsley". Cheshire West and Chester. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 19 April 2010. ^ Presidents of the BMI, BMI, nd (c. 2005). ^ J. I. Y. Klaver in Lingua Et, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2019. Retrieved 3 July 2020. ^ Darwin 1887, p. 287. ^ Darwin 1860, p. 481. ^ a b Donoghue, Denis (17 October 2013). "The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, by Charles Kingsley. The classic children's story is 150 years old". The Irish Times. Retrieved 25 September 2016. ^ Boyd, Peter D. A. (1993). "Pteridomania – the Victorian passion for ferns". peterboyd.com. ^ Frankel, Robert (2007). Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890–1950 (Studies in American Thought and Culture). University of Wisconsin Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0299218805. By midcentury such other eminent figures as Thomas Arnold and Charles Kingsley were also exalting the Anglo-the Saxon race. An essential feature of Anglo-Saxonism was the recognition of the race's Teutonic origins. ^ Miller, Brook (2011). America and the British Imaginary in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Literature. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0230103764. ^ Longley, Edna (2001). Poetry and Posterity. Bloodaxe Books. ISBN 978-1852244354. ^ Horsman, Reginald (1976). Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850 (Journal of the History of Ideas – Vol. 37, No. 3 ed.). University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 76. ^ McCourt, John (2015). Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0198729600. ^ McCourt, John (2015). Representing Race: Racisms, Ethnicity and the Media. SAGE Publishing. p. 3. ISBN 978-0761969129. ^ Davis, Wes (11 March 2007). "When English Eyes Are Smiling". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 September 2016. ^ Michie, Elsie B. (1976). "The Simianization of the Irish". Outside the Pale: Cultural Exclusion, Gender Difference, and the Victorian Woman Writer (Reading Women Writing). Cornell University Press. pp. 49. ISBN 978-0801480850. ^ "The Kingsley". thistle.com. Retrieved 21 February 2019. ^ Composer's website. Retrieved 2 May 2020. Sources[edit] Darwin, Charles (1860), On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, London: John Murray 2nd edition. Retrieved on 20 July 2007 Darwin, Charles (1887), Darwin, F (ed.), The life and letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter, London: John Murray (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin) Retrieved on 20 July 2007 Dawson, William James (1905). "Charles Kingsley". In Dawson, William James (ed.). The Makers of English Fiction. F. H. Revell Company. Kingsley, Charles (1877). Kingsley, Frances Eliza Grenfell (ed.). Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of His Life. New York: Scribner, Armstrong. Further reading[edit] Stephen, Leslie (1892). "Kingsley, Charles" . Dictionary of National Biography. 31. pp. 175–181. Anonymous (1873). Illustrated by Frederick Waddy. "Canon Kingsley" . Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day. London: Tinsley Brothers. pp. 90–92 – via Wikisource. External links[edit] Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charles Kingsley. Wikisource has original works written by or about: Charles Kingsley Wikiquote has quotations related to: Charles Kingsley Works by Charles Kingsley at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Charles Kingsley at Internet Archive Works by Charles Kingsley at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Famous Quotes by Charles Kingsley A painted bollard based on a water fairy unveiled in Whitchurch, Hampshire (photo within article) Charles Kingsley at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Index entry for Charles Kingsley at Poets' Corner Charles Kingsley collection, 1851–1871 at Pitts Theology Library, Candler School of Theology v t e Novels by Charles Kingsley Yeast (1848) Alton Locke (1849) Hypatia (1853) Westward Ho! (1855) The Water-Babies (1863) Hereward the Wake (1866) v t e Victorian-era children's literature Authors Henry Cadwallader Adams R. M. Ballantyne Lucy Lyttelton Cameron Lewis Carroll Christabel Rose Coleridge Harry Collingwood Maria Edgeworth Evelyn Everett-Green Juliana Horatia Ewing Frederic W. Farrar G. E. Farrow Agnes Giberne Anna Maria Hall L. T. Meade G. A. Henty Frances Hodgson Burnett Thomas Hughes Richard Jefferies Charles Kingsley W. H. G. Kingston Rudyard Kipling Andrew Lang Frederick Marryat George MacDonald Mary Louisa Molesworth Kirk Munroe E. Nesbit Frances Mary Peard Beatrix Potter William Brighty Rands Talbot Baines Reed Elizabeth Missing Sewell Anna Sewell Mary Martha Sherwood Flora Annie Steel Robert Louis Stevenson Hesba Stretton Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna Charlotte Maria Tucker Charlotte Mary Yonge Illustrators Eleanor Vere Boyle Gordon Browne Randolph Caldecott Thomas Crane Walter Crane George Cruikshank Thomas Dalziel (engraver) Richard Doyle H. H. Emmerson Edmund Evans (engraver) Kate Greenaway Sydney Prior Hall Edward Lear Harold Robert Millar Arthur Rackham J. G. Sowerby Millicent Sowerby John Tenniel Books List of 19th-century British children's literature titles Types Toy book Publishers Blackie & Son Marcus Ward & Co. Frederick Warne & Co Authority control BIBSYS: 90056136 BNE: XX1130084 BNF: cb12034354s (data) CANTIC: a10340920 CiNii: DA01585690 GND: 118722298 ISNI: 0000 0001 1400 9856 LCCN: n79062749 LNB: 000012156 MBA: 56d14f75-679d-4f9e-b33f-d095b0620216 NDL: 00445728 NKC: jn19990004347 NLA: 35272461 NLG: 116438 NLI: 000076024 NLK: KAC199614940 NLP: A11867784 NTA: 069331278 PLWABN: 9810594967905606 SELIBR: 193564 SNAC: w6wd3xkz SUDOC: 028524535 Trove: 891987 VcBA: 495/207727 VIAF: 27081838 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n79062749 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Kingsley&oldid=995044749" Categories: 1819 births 1875 deaths 19th-century Christian universalists 19th-century English Anglican priests 19th-century English novelists 19th-century historians Academics of the University of Cambridge Alumni of King's College London Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge Anglican socialists Anglican universalists Anglican writers Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom Burials in Hampshire Canons of Westminster Christian universalist clergy English Christian socialists English Christian universalists English historians English historical novelists English male novelists English sermon writers People educated at Bristol Grammar School People from Barnack People from Torridge District Victorian novelists Writers of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages Clergy from Devon People with tuberculosis Hidden categories: Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the ODNB Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Use British English from August 2011 Use dmy dates from May 2020 Articles incorporating Cite DNB template Commons category link is on Wikidata Articles with Project Gutenberg links Articles with Internet Archive links Articles with LibriVox links Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with LNB identifiers Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLG identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLP identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers Wikipedia articles with VcBA identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers AC with 25 elements Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Languages العربية تۆرکجه বাংলা Български Čeština Dansk Deutsch Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Frysk 한국어 Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית 日本語 Norsk bokmål Norsk nynorsk Polski Português Русский Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska Türkçe 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 18 December 2020, at 22:50 (UTC). 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