Oxford Movement (Tractarianism); Novels; Catholicism; Religion.
 

Bertonneau, Thomas F.  “Like Hypatia Before the Mob: Desire, Resentment, and Sacrifice in The Bostonians (An Anthropoetics),” Nineteenth-Century Literature Vol. 53, No. 1 (June 1998): 56-90.
Bertonneau disagrees with the conventional contemporary reading of the scene in Hypatia where Hypatia is murdered by a Christian mob.  Such reading is that the mob is a true representation of Christianity and that Kingsley is castigating the hypocrisy and brutality of the new religion.  Rather, Bertonneau argues, just because the crowd thinks of itself as Christian and acts in the name of this religion, it does not mean that it is in fact truly Christian.  “The truth, in Kingsley’s scene, is that the sacrificial impulse comes not from Jesus (not from Christianity) but from the mob, which is motivated by passion, not by compassion . . . . The mob enacts the very impulse, namely sacrifice, that Jesus would suspend” (89).

Hypatia; Catholicism; History; Henry James.
 

Buckton, Oliver S.  “'An Unnatural State’: Gender ‘Perversion,' and Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” Victorian Studies Vol. 35, No. 4 (Summer 1992): 359-383.
Buckton contends that Kingsley’s profound antipathy to Newman stemmed from more than his belief in Newman’s dishonesty.  Kingsley also disliked Newman's embracing of Romanism and what he felt to be Newman's sexual ambiguity.  Moreover, Kingsley’s attitude, argues Buckton, represented opinions widespread in Victorian society.  “One is . . . justified in taking Kingsley’s views on religious faith, sexual behavior, and gender roles (such as 'manliness') as more broadly representative of mainstream British society, at the time of their conflict, than were Newman’s” (379).

Newman Controversy; Sexuality; Catholicism.
 

Conacher, W. M.  “Charles Kingsley,” Queen’s Quarterly Vol. 45 (1938): 503-511.
Conacher presents a sketch of Kingsley’s life and works.  He praises the characterization in Hereward the Wake; it surpasses that of Bulwer Lytton’s Harold and that of Scott’s Ivanhoe.  While he criticizes Kingsley’s anti-Catholic treatment in Westward Ho! as being mere bigotry and not based on proper historical facts, he admires the novel’s color and romance.  Though Hypatia has matter for a masterpiece, “haste, over-enthusiasm, and lack of artistry have spoiled it” (509). Alton Locke is modern in its sympathy for the working classes and its political views, while Yeast, though the work of a young author, is praised for its “generous feeling” (510).  Kingsley, according to Conacher, “railed at John Bull in life and in letters and was essentially in the end John Bull himself” (511).

Overview; Novels; Religion; Catholicism.
 

Dawson, Carl. "Polemics: Charles Kingsley and Alton Locke," in his Victorian Noon: English Literature in 1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979): 179-202.
Dawson provides an overview of Kingsley’s character, his social and religious views, especially those on Roman Catholicism, and his involvement in and his diverse attitudes towards socialism.  He discusses Alton Locke, “perhaps one of the oddest literary documents of nineteenth-century England” (180), declaring that its recognition in modern times owes something to Kingsley’s treatment being relevant to contemporary Marxist assessments of literature.  “Kingsley articulates the sense of waste in his protagonist’s life; he equates Alton with the social upheavals of his age, setting him against middle-class virtues and assumptions; and he creates in Alton a psychic battle between social activism and pastoral escape”.  In  addition, “Alton Locke could figure in the survey that Georg Lukács, makes of the middling hero in nineteenth-century historical fiction” (201).

Overview; Social and Political Views; Religion; Catholicism; Alton Locke; Yeast.
 

DeLaura, David J.  “The Context of Browning’s Painter Poems: Aesthetics, Polemics, Historics,” PMLA Vol. 95, No. 3 (May 1980): 367-388.
DeLaura contends that the neo-Catholic art thesis of Alexis François Rio as set forth in his 1836 De la poésie chrétienne is essential for an adequate interpretation of Robert Browning’s painter poems of the 1840s and 1850s.  He also discusses how Kingsley was earlier influenced by Rio’s work and argues that Kingsley’s artistic views and his rejection of the Rio thesis constituted an important source for Browning’s artistic ideas.  He examines the passage in Yeast where Kingsley has Barnakill present a Protestant view of art and a repudiation of the Roman Catholic approach to art.  He also discusses Kingsley’s treatment in Alton Locke where he “uses the context of painting to develop the more positive aspect of the new Protestant aesthetic of realism” (377).  Moreover, DeLaura, in his examination of Kingley’s review of Jameson’s 1849 Sacred and Legendary Art, sees his antipathy to Rio’s Catholic view of art to have a strong sexual basis.  In this work his “tone of intense leering and almost scurrilous derision . . . is a measure of how deeply disturbing and threatening Kingsley found the new ‘ascetic’ rewriting of art history” (377).

Browning; Art; Catholicism; Sexuality; Yeast; Alton Locke.
 

Engelhardt, Carol Marie. “Victorian Masculinity and the Virgin Mary,” in Andrew Bradstock, Sean Gill, Anne Hogan, and Sue Morgan (eds.) Masculinity and Spirituality in Victorian Culture (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 2000): 44-57.
In this article Engelhardt considers how the understanding of the Virgin Mary of three Victorian clergymen, Kingsley, Edward Pusey and Frederick Faber, was related to their view of contemporary masculine identity and, in particular, how each used the Virgin Mary to define his own masculinity.  Kingsley's dislike of Mary was, as Engelhardy points out, understandable for one who hated Catholicism. However, she also relates his antipathy to the power that Catholics ascribe to Mary.  Kingsley shared the common Victorian view of the domesticity of women and that it was the role of females to inspire men but that they themselves should not aspire to power.  Engelhardt also contends that Kingsley's hostile attitude to Mary was related to fears about his own masculinity.  Early in his life Kingsley himself  had felt a pull towards Catholicism, a religion he later came to view as female-oriented and therefore unmanly. "It was no wonder, then, that Kingsley felt compelled to reject vociferously the most feminine part of this allegedly effeminate religion.  Kingsley was not just denouncing Mary; he was repudiating what he considered to be his own weakness and error in desiring Rome" (47).

Virgin Mary; Manliness; Catholicism; Yeast.
 

Fichter, Joseph H., S. J.  “The Socialism of a Protestant: Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)” in his Roots of Change (New York: Appleton-Century, 1939): 134-156.
Fichter reviews Kingsley’s life and principal works focusing on his social and political thought.  He is balanced in his assessment, pointing out a number of Kingsley’s faults, prejudices, and illogicalities in addition to his good qualities.  With respect to Kingsley’s changing views and specifically to his title of Christian Socialist, Fichter declares that “he was no more thoroughgoing Socialist than he was thoroughgoing Christian” (135).  Fichter briefly reviews Kingsley’s condition of England novels declaring Alton Locke to be “a tremendously effective book” (151) and the autobiographical Yeast to be badly marred by Kingsley’s intense anti-Catholic bigotry.  Fichter concludes that “the work of Charles Kingsley was on the whole a genuine contribution to the improvement of man’s relation with man.  His mistakes were the mistakes of every demagogue to tread the earth, but the hand he had in rousing social interest in English problems more than made up for them” (156).

Overview; Christian Socialism; Social and Political Views; Catholicism; Alton Locke; Yeast.
 

FitzPatrick, P. J. “Newman and Kingsley,” in David Nicholls and Fergus Kerr, OP (eds.) John Henry Newman: Reason, Rhetoric and Romanticism (UK: The Bristol Press, 1991): 88-108.
FitzPatrick discusses Kingsley's charges against Newman and the latter's replies to them.  He considers that the charges were more substantial than generally believed and that Newman's responses revealed "an uneasiness over evidence" and a certain looseness with veracity.
 

Newman Controversy; Catholicism.
 

FitzPatrick, P. J.  “Newman’s Apologia: Was Kingsley Right?,” in T. R. Wright, John Henry Newman: A Man for Our Time? (Newcastle: Grevatt and Grevatt, 1983): 28-36.
FitzPatrick analyzes the Kingsley-Newman controversy and particularly the charges laid by Kingsley against Newman’s veracity and Newman’s responses to them.  He contends that while Kingsley was unsubtle and perhaps unbalanced, his charges were substantive and ones Newman found difficult to answer.  “. . . time and again, Newman’s replies are inadequate; and [Kingsley] did point, however imperfectly, to deficiencies in Newman’s ways of thinking” (28).

Newman Controversy; Catholicism.
 

Griffin, John R.  “Kingsley’s Attack on Newman: An Essay in Social History,” Faith & Reason Vol. 4 (1978): 17-27.
Griffin dismisses two common interpretations for Kingsley’s attack on Newman, first, that he was a bluff, enthusiastic, John Bull type of Protestant, totally lacking in malice, and two, that he did not believe that Newman was a liar but, rather, that he was guilty of unnatural attitudes towards marriage and sex.  On the contrary, Kingsley was indeed motivated by a belief that Newman lied.  Moreover, Griffin points to evidence from newspapers, journals, and books and from views of individuals in Kingsley’s own circle, for example Maurice and Froude, that this was a common long-standing belief in England.  Participating in this belief, “Kingsley’s failing was neither intellectual nor sexual: it was moral, the fault of judging others” (24).

Newman Controversy; Catholicism.
 

Houghton, Walter E.  “The Issue Between Kingsley and Newman,” Theology Today Vol. IV (April 1947): 81-101.
Houghton argues that the fundamental disagreement between Kingsley and Newman was the fundamental dichotomy between Protestant Liberalism and Christian Orthodoxy. Though in many respects Kingsley was a conservative and a public enemy of those espousing the liberal cause, in religion he followed the liberalism of the likes of Maurice and Carlyle.  While we read such thinkers to understand liberal ideology, argues Houghton, we study Kingsley to comprehend Protestant Liberalism in its actual practice.

Catholicism; Newman Controversy; Newman, John Henry; Religion; Protestant Liberalism.
 

Jay, Elizabeth.  Faith and Doubt in Victorian Britain (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1986).
Jay briefly discusses Kingsley’s dislike of Roman Catholicism and Tractarianism.

Catholicism; Oxford Movement (Tractarianism).
 

Kijinski, John L. “Charles Kingsley's Yeast: Brotherhood and the Condition of England,” VIJ: Victorians Institute Journal Vol. 13 (1985): 97-109.
In his analysis of the novel Yeast Kijinski declares that the novel despite its "bland didacticism" is very representative of the period, the hungry forties.  He argues that the novel also provides a strong insight into a commonly held ideological stance of the time, namely that the growing antipathy between the haves and the have-nots might be improved without force, unions, redistribution of wealth if only all social classes acted sympathetically and humanely in the true belief that everyone is a member of the same common family.

Yeast; Social and Political Novel; Social and Political Views; Catholicism.
 

Litvack, Leon B.  “Callista, Martyrdom, and the Early Christian Novel in the Victorian Age,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts Vol. 17, No. 2 (1993): 159-173.
A primary goal of Hypatia, or, New Foes with an Old Face, according to Litvack, was to question deeply held Roman Catholic principles and views of history of such as Newman and Wiseman, authors themselves of martyrological historical novels Callista (1855) and Fabiola (1854) respectively.  Kingsley throughout Hypatia, written in the early days of his growing antagonism to Newman, disparages aspects of the Patristic age and especially the 5th century when Christianity was the state religion.  By depicting the 5th century Church as corrupt and tyrannical, Kingsley was attacking the contemporary English Roman Catholic Church which was rapidly growing in influence.  “Kingsley enjoins his readers to look to themselves for justification – not to the past, in which he finds little support for his faith” (165).

Hypatia; Catholicism; Newman; History.
 

Loesberg, Jonathan.  Fictions of Consciousness: Mill, Newman, and the Reading of Victorian Prose (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986).
Loesberg discusses the origin and development of the Kingsley-Newman controversy.  He contends that Newman essentially “slyly” baited Kingsley into making the precise criticism that was the most appropriate for Newman to reply to.  It was not a simple matter of an innocent Newman replying to a strong bigoted attack. “Still, he did no more than put Kingsley in a position in which Kingsley already felt comfortable.  Newman’s effort was not really to occupy the firmest ground he could, but simply the most pertinent.  Kingsley’s original accusation was the most easily refutable but also the least resonant.  To make his defense polemical, his autobiography an expression of his philosophy, Newman needed to confront the issues of consistency and honesty.  To bring the issues to the forefront, he did no more than nudge Kingsley in the direction of making clear what he had already implied in the original libel” (131).

Newman Controversy; Catholicism.
 

Morris, Kevin L. “John Bull and the Scarlet Woman: Charles Kingsley and Anti-Catholicism in Victorian Literature,” Recusant History Vol. 23, No. 2 (October 1996): 190-218.
Morris provides a thorough analysis of Kingsley's often virulent anti-Catholicism, discussing it in the context of other widespread contemporary anti-Catholic writings and sentiments held by many of the age's prominent intellectuals and writers. Morris also considers Newman's critique of anti-Catholic "Kingsleyism" especially as expressed in his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England.

Catholicism; Newman.
 

Newsome. David.  Godliness and Good Learning: Four Studies on a Victorian Ideal (London: Cassell, 1961).
Mention of Kingsley occurs frequently in Newsome’s work.  Newsome is particularly interested in Kingsley’s notion of manliness which he views as being very similar to the robustness, feistiness and vigorous vitality of  thumos, as opposed to the higher excellence of arete, equated by Coleridge with manliness.  Newsome also stresses that Kingsley, the first to combine manliness with godliness, considered manliness to be “an antidote to the poison of effeminacy – the most insidious weapon of the Tractarians – which was sapping the vitality of the Anglican Church” (207).  Manliness for Kingsley was using to the full all the qualities with which God has endowed men, including the sexual function.  That is why Roman Catholicism’s celibacy provided strong evidence of that religion’s lack of manliness and its consequent falling away from appropriate godliness.

Manliness; Muscular Christianity; Sexuality; Celibacy; Catholicism.
 

Schiefelbein, Michael.  “'Blighted' by a 'Upas-Shadow': Catholicism’s Function for Kingsley in Westward Ho!,” Victorian Newsletter Vol. 94 (Fall 1998): 10-17.
Schiefelbein examines Kingsley's severe characterizations of Catholics in Westward Ho!, especially two of his keenest bete noires, Catholics' worship of the Virgin Mary and Catholicism's embrace of asceticism and condemnation of the flesh.  Kingsley, advocate of muscular Christianity and espouser of manliness, detested what he considered to be effeminate "Mariolatry" which was responsible for weakness and womanishness in society.  He also condemned the asceticism of the Jesuits Parsons and Campion which he held to be an unnatural rejection of God-given impulses.  They were "spiritual grotesques" (15).  However, Schiefelbein also argues that Kingsley reveals his own ascetic impulses and his attraction to monkish ways in Westward Ho! and reconciles the opposite pulls of asceticism and carnal and sexual nature.  Schiefelbein concludes that while "one may certainly object to the role Kingsley assigns to Catholicism . . . it becomes an effective foil for enlightening his readers - and, very likely, for reminding himself - of the dangers of Manicheanism" (16).

Westward Ho!; Religion; Catholicism; Virgin Mary; Muscular Christianity; Sexuality; Manliness.
 

Trevor, Meriol.  Newman: Light in Winter (London: Macmillan, 1962).
Trevor examines the Kingsley-Newman controversy paying particular attention to Kingsley’s motives in instigating his attack.  He considers that Kingsley’s dislike of Newman stemmed from the early attraction Newman had for his wife Fanny who intended to join Pusey’s sisterhood.  Kingsley had to win back his wife and depose Newman’s “authoritative image” (327).  Newman was quite unaware that to Kingsley there was a particularly personal reason for linking virility with truth and cunning with virginity.  For Newman signified to Kingsley, who abhorred Catholic celibacy and the notion of women choosing virginity, “a powerful father-figure withholding desirable brides from ardent lovers by the mental bondage of the ideal of celibacy”.  This sexual connotation, according to Trevor, “explains the passionate hatred evident on every page of the pamphlet in which he set out to settle the score of twenty years” (328).  Trevor also discusses the reaction of the reviews and the periodicals to the controversy.

Newman Controversy; Catholicism; Sexuality; Celibacy; Reception of Kingsley's Works.

Uffelman, Larry K.  “Kingsley’s Hereward the Wake: From Serial to Book,” Victorians Institute Journal Vol. 14 (1986): 147-156.
Kingsley, according to Uffelman, very carefully revised the text of his last novel in its original serial form for its publication as a book.  Published first in the Protestant journal Good Words, Hereward displays throughout Kingsley’s hatred for effete, feminine monasticism and by extension Roman Catholicism.  However, Uffelman shows that Kingsley as he made revisions for publishing the novel in book form toned down some of his more venomous passages “tempering his story to fit a different medium and to appeal to the taste of a more liberal publisher," Macmillan (155).

Hereward the Wake; Macmillan's; Catholicism; Publication.

Uffelman, Larry K., and P. G. Scott,  “Kingsley's Serial Novels: Yeast,” Victorian Periodicals Newsletter Vol. IX, No. 4 (December 1976): 111-119.
Uffelman and Scott discuss the early publication history of Yeast which first appeared anonymously in six monthly installments in Fraser’s Magazine from July to December 1848 and which was later republished in volume format in 1851.  They pay particular attention to the revisions Kingsley made in the volume text.  In addition to tempering many phrases which might have upset orthodox religious sensibilities, Kingsley also added much anti-Catholic material in the 1851 book, especially in the sub-plot concerning Luke, the Tractarian curate and Lancelot’s cousin.  The other major revision involved expanding the ‘discussion’ element in the last part of the novel where Lancelot meets the prophet Barnakill.  This tilts “the balance of the novel towards the question of religious belief” ( 117).  With respect to the diverse revisions Uffelman and Scott declare that “The new and topical sub-plot devoted to Luke’s conversion to Catholicism made the novel more abstract and theological, as did also the expanded conversation with the prophet in the last chapter.  The minor revisions, however, suggest an interesting slight softening in Kingsley’s attitudes to more orthodox religious earnestness, and show also that Kingsley himself had become aware of some of the unevenness of plot and tone which serial composition had encouraged in his first novel” (118-119).

Yeast; Catholicism; Religion; Publication.
 

Williams, Stanley.  "'Yeast': A Victorian Heresy," North American Review Vol. 212 (November 1920): 697-704.
Williams discusses Yeast, paying particular attention to the novel’s characterization and such themes as antipathy to Roman Catholicism and the espousal of Christian Socialism.  Though he discerns distinct problems with the novel, for example its lack of genus, he praises its pervasive sincerity and Kingsley’s palpable ardor as well as its presentation of important Victorian disputes and movements.  While students of Victorian literature will readily discern the problems of this “potpourri”, “they will understand the Victorians better, and so think their reading worth while” (704).

Yeast; Catholicism; Christian Socialism.
 

Wolff, Robert Lee.  Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England (New York and London: Garland, 1977).
Wolff praises Hypatia’s “vivid and engaging prose style”, its historical authenticity, the depiction of Hypatia, and its readability.  He writes that Kingsley had two main intentions in writing the novel. He was criticizing Transcendentalism, held by Emerson and others, wishing “to illustrate the dangers of the intellectual arrogance which falsely persuaded individual human beings that they could seek and find their own deity, ignoring the Church and religious tradition” (274).  Also, suspicious of the intellect and believing that the only path to faith was through emotional commitment, Kingsley was attacking the Tractarians and converts like Newman whom he held were “groping in the dead past for outworn dogmas and practices” (275).

Hypatia; Emerson; Transcendentalism; Catholicism; Celibacy.
 

Young, G. M.  “Sophist and Swashbuckler,” in Daylight and Champaign: Essays (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1948; first published 1937): 96-104.
Young discusses Kingsley’s controversy with Newman.  Agreeing that Kingsley was no match for the brilliance of Newman and that he was totally out-manoeuvered, Young nevertheless contends that Kingsley in an admittedly “clumsy way” had a certain right.  “But if the public, or the modern reader, said ‘Never mind all that: what we want to know is, when Dr. Newman or one of his pupils tells us a thing, can we believe it as we should believe it if the old-fashioned parson said it?’ I am afraid the upshot of the Apologia and its appendices is No” (103).

Newman Controversy; Catholicism.
 

Zemka, Sue. Victorian Testaments: The Bible, Christology, and Literary Authority in Early-Nineteenth-Century British Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
Zemka discusses Kingsley's 1849 review of Anna Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, the first of her four-part study of medieval and Renaissance European art. It was a laudatory review and though Kingsley displays his customary antipathy to Catholicism he agrees with Jameson's view that English Protestant culture's best defense against the incursions of Catholicism "is a cautious appropriation of Catholic culture's superior sense of the beautiful" (106).

Art; Catholicism.