Charles Kingsley

<p>Novelist poet Anglican priest and controversialist Charles Kingsley (1819–75) epitomizes the bustling Victorian man of faith and letters a prolific polymath as ready to break a lance with John Henry Newman over Christian doctrine as he was to preach to schoolchildren on the virtues of manly physical struggle. Kingsley’s <i>The Water-Babies </i>and <i>Westward Ho! </i>were best-sellers which became classics of children’s literature. Kingsley has come to epitomize the Victorian age.</p><p>On closer inspection Kingsley is harder to categorize: a socialist who was also an imperialist a Chartist revolutionary who was Queen Victoria’s favourite novelist a natural theologian who popularized Darwin a priest who celebrated sex as sacrament. Kingsley only appears straightforward if you consider him one piece at a time. The debates he shaped remain with us today: faith and sexuality economics and exploitation race and identity. The aim of this book is to present the whole man: to consider the public crusades for public health alongside the most private fantasies of sexual intercourse; to consider the ardent imperialist alongside the Darwinist. It will be of interest to all students of Victorian studies as well as of British/Imperial history church history and especially the history of science.</p>