Brown, William Henry. Charles Kingsley: The Work and Influence of Parson Lot (Manchester: The Co-Operative Union, 1924).
Brown, an acquaintance of J. M Ludlow, provides a book length overview of Kingsley’s life and work focusing in particular on his “Parson Lot” period. Though excessively complimentary and lacking in critical rigor, this biography offers some interesting insights.
Full Book Treatment ; Overview .
 

Chitty, Susan.  The Beast and the Monk: A Life of Charles Kingsley (New York: Mason/Charter, 1974).
For this excellent book-length biography of Kingsley Chitty had access to three hundred love letters from Kingsley to Fanny that had hithertoo not been viewed by anyone outside the family, as well as to a locked diary kept by Fanny in Nice during her year's separation from Kingsley in 1843.  The latter contained some revealing, sexually charged drawings.  Chitty declares that it is because of these new sources "that the present biography can claim to give a fuller and more intimate picture of Kingsley than any that has till now appeared" (17).
Full Book Treatment ; Overview ; Sexuality ; Social and Political Views .
 
 

Colloms, Brenda.  Charles Kingsley: The Lion of Eversley (London: Constable, 1975).
This is a book-length biography that examines the myriad sides to Kingsley's life.  Colloms concludes that if the abundantly gifted Kingsley had been more single-minded, more ambitious, and less sensitive, he might have attained a more prominent position in literary history or in the Church or in science.
Overview ; Full Book Treatment .
 
 

Kendall, Guy.  Charles Kingsley and His Ideas (London: Hutchinson, 1947).
This book-length treatment of Kingsley in addition to providing a biographical account focuses in particular on his diverse views and ideas.
Overview ; Full Book Treatment ; Social and Political Views .
 

Klaver, J. M. I. The Apostle of the Flesh: A Critical Life of Charles Kingsley. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 140.  Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2006. 
Klaver’s biography does excellent service in depicting Kingsley as one of the Victorian age’s leading figures. It is a thorough account that supersedes the five earlier biographies by Thorp, Pope-Hennessy, Martin, Colloms, and Chitty. Klaver has relied heavily on original manuscript letters and this material, probably new to most readers, goes far in rendering this biography fresh and distinctive. Kingsley’s multivariegated life is well portrayed in the broad social-historical-religious context of the Victorian age. Klaver pays ample attention to Kingsley’s role in and reaction to such movements and issues as Tractarianism, sanitary reform, Chartism, Christian Socialism, biblical Higher Criticism, evolution, educational reform, the women’s movement, scientific, botanical, and geological discoveries, the antislavery movement, mus-cular Christianity, the Crimean and American Civil Wars. Klaver pays particular attention to such comparatively unexplored texts as Kingsley’s sermons, Glaucus, The Hermits, At Last, The Saint’s Tragedy, the serialized Yeast, and his writings for Politics for the People and The Christian Socialist. Though Klaver recognizes the charges of racism frequently laid at Kingsley he attempts to mitigate them. For example, acknowledging that Kingsley denied that the people killed by Rajah Brooke were truly human, Klaver contends that he held that only the pirates had a “beast-life” and not indigenous people in general. Rejecting this interpretation “distorts the image of a man who was essentially humane and generous by nature” (199). 
Full Book Treatment.
 

Marmo, Macario.  The Social Novel of Charles Kingsley (Salerno: Di Giacomo, 1937).
In this book length study of Kingsley’s life, personality, views, and works Marmo focuses in particular on the art as well as the social implications of Kingsley’s social novels.  He concludes that Kingsley the man was more significant than his poetry and novels.  His very diverse deeds and objectives were greater than the art of his literary works.  Above all, Marmo contends, Kingsley was a vehement opponent of democracy as well as of rampant laissez-faire competition.  In summing up Marmo declares “But now that this selfish democratic system has reached its crisis and civilization is centering again round Rome, we must recognize in Kingsley an ideal Pioneer;  for Charles Kingsley denounced the foul competitive system at the time of its birth, and remained all his life the assertor of the Collectivist Ideal and the monitor of Co-operation as the one remedy for unbridled competition” (114).
Overview ; Full Book Treatment ; Novels .
 
 

Martin, Robert Bernard.  The Dust of Combat: A Life of Charles Kingsley (London: Faber and Faber, 1959).
A full book biography of Kingsley with excellent critical analyses of his writings, practical works and his multifarious views and ideas.  Contains good illustrations.
Full Book Treatment ; Overview ; Social and Political Views .
 
 

Pope-Hennessy, Una.  Canon Charles Kingsley: A Biography (New York, Macmillan, 1949).
A book-length biography.
Full Book Treatment ; Overview ; Social and Political Views .
 
 

Thorp, Margaret Farrand.  Charles Kingsley 1819-1875 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1937).
A well-documented book-length biography and analysis of Kingsley's diverse ideas and views.  Contains a good bibliography of Kingsley's own writings.
Full Book Treatment ; Overview ; Social and Political Views .
 
 

Uffelman, Larry K. Charles Kingsley (Boston: Twayne, 1979).
In this book length study Uffelman focuses on Kingsley's literary achievement.  Chapter I provides an overview in which Kingsley's works are presented chronologically.  In subsequent chapters they are grouped thematically.  Uffelman declares that Kingsley, though a writer of some attractive lyrics and ballads, was a minor poet.  His main claim was as a novelist.  Though much of what he wrote was literature with a purpose, Uffelman considers "that the impact of that literature is due not so much to its purpose as to its presentation" (136).
Overview ; Full Book Treatment ; Novels ; Poetry .