Rev. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), clergyman and novelist

Letters to and from Kingsley and his wife.

1-3: Letters by Kingsley. 1865-1873.

4-11: letters to Kingsley, and in one case (no.7) to his wife Fanny, from Charles Mansfield. The last two are written from South America, respectively from Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, in which Mansfield discusses his travels in Brazil and Argentina and the prospects of travelling in Paraguay. 1846-1852.

12-16: letters to Kingsley apparently from his publisher, often undated and/or incomplete. 1854-1857 and n.d.

17: letter to Fanny Kingsley after her husband's death, discussing her husband's work. 1875.

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), novelist, clergyman and controversialist, was born on 12 June 1819 at the vicarage in Holne, Devon, the son of the Rev. Charles Kingsley (1781-1860). He was educated at home, at Clifton and at Helston Grammar School in Cornwall, before studying in London at King's College from 1836 to 1838. In the latter year he went to Magdalene College, Cambridge; during his Cambridge years he underwent periods of religious doubt, overcame his initial shyness and made friends through sporting activities, became a close friend of Charles Mansfield (another clergyman's son who was also an athlete, amateur scientist and eccentric), and met his future wife, Frances Eliza Grenfell, known as Fanny, who was the daughter of Pascoe Grenfell (1761-1838) MP. He graduated in 1842 and became curate of Eversley in Hampshire; in 1844, Fanny having decided not to follow her initial leanings towards joining a celibate religious order, he was married. After a brief period in Devon he returned to Eversley as rector later in 1844, working hard to improve what had been a poor and rather wild parish.

His fictional writing began during this period and shows a need to reconcile his religious faith, his almost pantheistic feeling for the physical world, his sexuality, and his social concerns: the last being influenced by his reading of Carlyle, Coleridge and F.D. Maurice. The "hungry forties" and Chartist agitation saw him fling himself into the new Christian Socialist movement with Maurice, Thomas Hughes and J.M. Ludlow. His novels of the period such as Alton Locke reflect this. He withdrew from direct political engagement as the 1850s proceeded but continued to reflect these concerns in his writing, in which he was seen as promoting a "muscular Christianity" that valued physical activity, decency and social engagement over the ritualistic and theological concerns of the Oxford Movement (he was involved in polemic controversy with Cardinal Newman). He welcomed the publication of Darwin's theories, evolution occurring most notably in his most enduring work the children's novel The Water Babies, and was a friend of Thomas Huxley.

His historical novels led to his appointment as Regius Professor of History at Cambridge in 1860, but his experience was not an entirely happy one, being an amateur rather than professional historian and prone to imaginative interpretation rather than strict reliance on sources. He became a canon of Chester cathedral and then, in 1873, of Westminster Abbey (both appointments being in the gift of the crown). He died on 23 January 1875.

At Wellcome Collection:

Further letters by Kingsley can be found in the papers of the Ackland and Littlewood families: MS.5420 comprises letters by Kingsley to his friend Dr William Henry Ackland (c. 1825-1898), of Bideford, Devon. MS.3108 comprises the Morning sermon on the Day of Humiliation for Cholera Oct. 5. 1849 preached by Kingsley at Eversley, Hampshire. Kingsley also occurs as a correspondent in papers of Sir Richard Owen (MS.5786), George Rolleston (MS.6119) and Charles Lyell (MS.7878).

A letter by Kingsley's brother George Henry Kingsley (1827-1892), physician and author, in which he describes the literary circles to which Charles has introduced him, is held as MS.7838.