Charles Kingsley: The 20th Century Critical Heritage

Abe, Ikuo. “Muscular Christianity in Japan: The Growth of a Hybrid.” International Journal of the History of Sport 23, no. 5 (August 2006): 714-738. 
The author examines the role that the notion of muscular Christianity played in developing attitudes towards sports and modernity in Japan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using Japanese translations of the works of Thomas Hughes and Kingsley as an index of the extent that muscular Christian ideas penetrated into Japan, Abe reveals that both Hughes and Kingsley had an unexpected influence. 
Muscular Christianity; Japan.

Adams, James Eli.  “Pater’s Muscular Aestheticism,” in Hall, Donald E. (ed.).  Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 215-240.
Adams argues that though many would consider that the views of Kingsley and Walter Pater have little in common and that much of Kingsley's muscularity was antipathetic to Pater, the latter's thoughts on Greece bear strong connections to Kingsley's muscular aesthetic of the male body. In particular, Kingsley's muscular Christianity and celebration of the male body in effect constituted "an essential precedent for Pater's aestheticism" (235). 
Pater, Walter ; Manliness ; Sexuality; Greek Art ; Winckelmann .

Adamson, John William. English Education, 1789-1902 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964; first published 1930).
Among several other mentions of Kingsley, Adamson refers to his advocacy of improved educational opportunities for women. 
Females ; Education ; Muscular Christianity

Adcock, A. St. John. “The Kingsleys,” The Bookman, January 1904, 167-173.
Adcock provides a brief, mainly laudatory, account of Kingsley’s life and works. He stresses that Kingsley will be remembered more for his literary skills, as a historical romancist, a novelist, and as a writer of ballads, than as a priest or reformer. Though acknowledging that the confrontation with Newman was regrettable for Kingsley, Adcock considers that the frequent representation of Kingsley as aggressive and ferocious is erroneous. Rather Kingsley was moved by sincerity and in his numerous controversies “was actuated more by a genuine sense of duty than by any natural inclination” (171).
Overview. 

Adrian, Arthur A. “Charles Kingsley Visits Boston,” Huntington Library Quarterly Vol. 20 (Nov. 1956): 94-97.
Adrian discusses the visit of Kingsley and his daughter Rose to Boston in 1874.  He provides the full text of a hitherto unpublished diary entry of Mrs. J. T. Fields, Kingsley’s hostess during his sojourn in Boston, as well as extracts from a letter dated 23 March, 1874 which she sent to Laura Winthrop Johnson.  Both reveal interesting details of the Kingsleys’ Boston visit. 
America ; Boston .

Alderson, Brian. “Heroic Reading,” Children's Literature in Education Vol. 26, No. 1 (March 1995): 73-82.
In his examination of The Heroes Brian Alderson praises the work’s organic unity, its rhythmic prose, its intensity of vision, its dignity and consistency. 
The Heroes

Alderson, Brian.  “Introduction” to Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995): ix-xxix.
In his introduction to a 1995 edition of The Water-Babies Alderson discusses the story's first publication as a serial in Macmillan's Magazine, the subsequent revision of the text for its appearance in book format in May 1863, and the contemporary market for children's literature. After a lengthy analysis of The Water-Babies, Alderson treats some of the critical reaction to it. He concludes with a discussion of the importance of Kingsley's authorial presence in the novel. 
The Water-Babies ; Publication ; Macmillan’s Magazine ; Reception of Kingsley's Works .

Alderson, David.  “An Anatomy of the British Polity: Alton Locke and Christian Manliness,” in Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys (eds.) Victorian Identities: Social and Cultural Formations in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996): 43-61.
Alderson examines the history of the concept “Christian manliness” and, in particular, Kingsley’s promotion of it in his life and works. He focuses on the concept’s delineation in Alton Locke .  He declares that this novel “lays bare most clearly the anxieties and ideological commitments which produced his influential conceptualisation of the relationship between the masculine body and social order.”  Alderson is particularly concerned “with the imperatives of a counter-revolutionary and Protestant culture which enabled the Kingsleyan sense of the ideal male body to become so central to the masculine self-definition of Britain’s rulers” (43-44). 
Manliness ; Muscular Christianity ; Alton Locke ; Imperialism .

Alderson, David. Mansex Fine: Religion, Manliness and Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century British Culture (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998).
Alderson analyzes how certain nineteenth century writers responded to contemporary debates about gender, religion, and nation. In his treatment of Kingsley and Alton Locke, he discusses how a particularly Anglo-Saxon Christian manliness evolved as a reaction to Catholicism and revolution and became identifiable with British imperial culture. In his later treatment of Kingsley’s polemics against Newman, Alderson stresses that Kingsley’s strong antipathy to Catholicism was largely based on what he felt to be that religion’s effeminacy and asceticism. By implication, Protestantism, the true British religion, was the epitome of manliness. 
Alton Locke; Manliness; Imperialism; Newman; Religion.

Allen, Peter.  “Christian Socialism and the Broad Church Circle,” Dalhousie Review Vol. 49 (Spring, 1969): 58-68.
Allen discusses Kingsley’s involvement in the Christian Socialist movement of 1848-1854.  He argues that most of the Christian Socialists were members of the Broad Church circle and that political radicalism or political socialism was far from being their principal concern.  Rather, they believed that moral or educational reform of the working classes must precede political action, a viewpoint strongly adhered to by Kingsley.  Though a minority of the Christian Socialists, for example J. M. Ludlow, advocated extreme political reform, Allen suggests that the evidence indicates  “that we cannot understand Christian Socialism and its leaders if we look only to the history of political radicalism, but that the movement might appear in a new and valuable light through a thorough study of the Broad Church circle.  Rather than seeing Christian Socialism as primarily a political movement diverted from its true aims, we should, I think, see it as an outgrowth of a school of religious thought and of a certain intellectual and social group in Victorian society” (66-67). 
Christian Socialism ; Religion ; Social and Political Views .

Amigoni, David.  Victorian Biography: Intellectuals and the Ordering of Discourse (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993).
Amigoni discusses the framing statement or preface, ‘To the undergraduates of Cambridge,’ that Kingsley added to Alton Locke after his appointment to the Regius Chair of Modern History at Cambridge in 1860.  He points out that Kingsley did not confine the study of history to the examination of sources, the collecting of evidence, and the preparation of impartial and provable claims about the past.  Rather, Kingsley held that modern history is thoroughly focused on the present and what he termed the "‘conditions and opinions of our fellow-countrymen’". As Amigoni states, modern history for Kingsley “is concerned on the one hand with exploring the conditions of life experienced by people living under the social and cultural relations of the present; and on the other hand Modern History is concerned with the ‘opinions’ of these people” (77). 
Alton Locke ; History .

Archer, Richard Lawrence.  Secondary Education in the Nineteenth Century (London: Cass, 1966).
Archer discusses the educational thought and practice of Kingsley and their subsequent influence on British education.  He stresses the connection for Kingsley between religion and education; both served the same end.  Moreover, science in the curriculum was essential and was in no respect against the teaching of religion.  His ideal of mens sana in corpore sano went hand in hand with his espousal of muscular Christianity.  He detested “the identification of bodily feebleness with spiritual strength” (200).  Archer also examines Kingsley’s important role in the sanitary movement and his work in having hygienic instruction in schools. 
Education ; Muscular Christianity ; Sanitation ; Science .

Avery, Gillian (with the assistance of Angela Bull). Nineteenth Century Children: Heroes and Heroines in English Children’s Stories 1780-1900 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965).
Though Kingsley in real life did not like the punishing of children, believing that misbehavior often has a physical cause and that punishment can undermine a child’s relationship with his parents, punishment is a major theme in The Water-Babies .  Avery declares that Kingsley wishes to point the moral that punishment is the natural consequence of sin.  She also states that education is the primary purpose of The Water-Babies , “the education of the child to become the honest English gentleman that was Kingsley’s ideal” (49).  Holding that education and teaching are quite distinct, Kingsley depicts Tom’s trials and subsequent learning and the final attainment of grace as constituting his true education. 
The Water-Babies ; Punishment of Children ; Children ; Education .

Backstrom, Philip N.  Christian Socialism and Co-operation in Victorian England: Edward Vansittart Neale and the Co-operative Movement (London: Croom Helm, 1974).
Backstrom makes several mentions of Kingsley's activities in the Christian Socialist movement. 
Christian Socialism .

Baker, Ernest Albert. The History of the English Novel. Vol. VIII (New York: Barnes and Noble; first published 1937): 161-176.
Baker provides a brief overview of Kingsley's novels, discussing their major themes and the context of the times in which they were written, especially the period of the Crimean war. 
Novels ; Social and Political Novel ; Crimean War .

Baker, Joseph Ellis.  The Novel and the Oxford Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932): 88-100.
Baker argues that Kingsley’s hostility to the Oxford Movement was based on a quite different view concerning the nature of man.  Whereas the Oxford Movement held that man's nature was essentially sinful, Kingsley, “of the school of Rousseau”, believed that it was essentially good (88).  Baker reviews the novels of this “pugnacious Protestant” for anti-Catholic sentiments (99).  “Though Kingsley’s pictures of Tractarians are so obviously prejudiced that it is hardly necessary to correct them, his comments help to reveal the core of his own vigorous mind, and the setting of the Oxford Movement within the framework of other mid-century ideas” (100). 
Oxford Movement (Tractarianism) ; Novels ; Catholicism ; Religion .

Baker, William J.  “Charles Kingsley in Little London,” Colorado Magazine Vol. 45 (1968): 187-203. 
In this illustrated article Baker discusses Kingsley’s trip to America and his sojourn in Colorado Springs in 1874.  Kingsley’s connection with and interest in this town stemmed from his son Maurice, who worked there as a railway engineer, and from his daughter Rose, who visited there in 1871-72.  After sketching the English community and the pervasive anglophilia of Colorado Springs, Baker provides a brief account of Kingsley’s visit there where he was particularly impressed by the natural beauties of the Pike’s Peak region. 
America ; Colorado Springs ; Nature .

Baker, William J.  “Charles Kingsley on the Crimean War: A Study in Chauvinism.”  Southern Humanities Review Vol. IV, No. 3 (Summer 1970): 247-256.
Baker notes that the Crimean War was occurring while Kingsley was writing Westward Ho!, a war to which he refers over and over in this novel. Numerous aspects of this later war were similar, he believed, in many respects to the earlier war with Spain.  The chauvinism he consistently displayed during the Crimean War fostered as well as reflected the chauvinism of his contemporaries.  Moreover, Kingsley, who never fought in a war, had a romantic “boy-like fantasy” view of war (254).  While in many ways, declares Baker, he was liberal, compassionate, a free-thinking cleric, a supporter of the poor, an advocate for social reform, a critic of the discriminatory class system, “his liberal sensitivity stopped at the northern edge of the English Channel”.  He combined in a contradictory stance “an insightful concern for his country's social problems alongside an uncritical bellicosity toward national foes” (255). 
Westward Ho! ; Crimean War ; War ; Chauvinism ; Social and Political Views .

Baker, William J.  “A Victorian Chapter in Anglo-American Understanding: Three Letters From Charles Kingsley to ‘Little London’, Colorado,” Notes and Queries Vol. 81 (March 1971): 91-97.
Baker publishes and discusses three letters Kingsley published in the Colorado Springs newspaper Out West . The first was a series of reflections on international relations and politics occasioned by the recovery of the Prince of Wales from typhoid fever. The second concerned the affair of the ship Alabama during the American Civil War; the third was a report on American visitors to Chester while Kingsley was a canon of Chester Cathedral. 
Colorado Springs ; America .

Baldwin, Stanley E. Charles Kingsley (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1934).
This is a book length treatment of Kingsley's life and works.  After chapters providing a brief biography, a discussion of the background of the novels, and a consideration of the influence of Carlyle and Maurice, Baldwin devotes separate chapters to each of the novels: Yeast, Alton Locke, Two Years Ago, Hypatia, Westward Ho!, and Hereward the Wake .  Baldwin is measured in his assessment, though he still finds much to praise in Kingsley's diverse literary endeavors. Nevertheless, he considers Kingsley the man as more prominent than his literature.  "Some men's writings are the greatest part of them, and posterity studies their lives through a spirit of curiosity excited by their works.  In a sense this is true of Kingsley, but in a truer sense many are reading Kingsley's literary works because of the indelible impression his personality made upon his fellow men, for whom, in all his activities, he labored.  His life in itself was a poem of deep lyric passion" (194). 
Full Book Treatment ; Overview ; Carlyle ; Maurice ; Y east; Alton Locke ; Two Years Ago ; Hypatia ; Westward Ho! ; Hereward the Wake .

Banerjee, Jacqueline. Through the Northern Gate: Childhood and Growing Up in British Fiction, 1719-1901 (New York: Lang, 1996).
Banerjee commends Kingsley’s unsentimental, positive, and far from frightening portrayal of child death in The Water-Babies . However, she considers the end when Tom and Ellie are brought back to land “a let-down” (104). 
The Water-Babies ; Child Death .

Banton, Michael.  “Kingsley’s Racial Philosophy,” Theology Vol. LXXVIII, No. 655 (Jan., 1975): 22-30.
In this short examination of Kingsley's views on race Banton warns of the danger of presentism, that is interpreting these views in terms of the perspective and context of a later period.  Some of Kingsley's writings, declares Banton, have been considered with a presentism interpretation and he himself "has at times been categorized as a racist by authors who reflect very little before applying this highly elastic contemporary category to people living in a period when the understanding of the biological nature of man was very different" (22). 
Racial Prejudices ; Presentism ; Darwin ; Evolution

Barker, Charles. "Erotic Martyrdom: Kingsley's Sexuality beyond Sex," Victorian Studies Vol. 44, No. 3 (Spring 2002): 465-488.
Charles Barker examines Kingsley’s great personal interest in sex and sexuality as well as the treatment of these topics in his writings. He stresses that Kingsley sanctified sex and that he fervently believed that temporal sex without the promise of its continuation in afterlife was anathema. Barker also rejects the theory that Kingsley’s bitter denunciation of Catholicism and what he held was Catholics’ confusion over many sexual matters signified a nascent homophobia. Rather, Kingsley excoriated the celibacy valorized by Newman as a vilification of flesh-and-blood marriage which Kingsley considered was a true path to God. 
Sexuality; Catholicism ; Newman

Barnard, H. C.  A History of English Education From 1760.   2nd ed.  (First published 1947) (London: University of London Press, 1961).
Barnard provides a very brief overview of Kingsley the educationist.  He declares that Kingsley was a strong advocate of science in the school curriculum and held that it complemented the study of religion.  Moreover, he was a firm believer that a knowledge of science was essential for progress in the hygienic and sanitary reform movement. 
Education ; Sanitation .

Beer, Gillian.  “Charles Kingsley and the Literary Image of the Countryside,” Victorian Studies Vol. VIII, No. 3 (March 1965): 243-254.
Beer argues that Kingsley’s genuine love and appreciation of nature and the countryside were combined with an understanding of the frequently difficult lot of the country poor.  He eschewed any aesthetic of landscape which ignored the plight of its inhabitants. Kingsley’s “point is that the starving and sick cannot savour beauty, and that the country poor require help if their life is to become anything better than a mockery of pastoralism” (248). 
Nature ; Country Poor .

Beer, Gillian.  Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983).
Beer considers Kingsley's debt to Darwin and the evolutionary theories in his works, particularly The Water-Babies .  The latter novel, Beer points out, echoes how Darwin's natural order reflects such features of Victorian society as division of labor, competition, and family structures.  Kingsley also follows to a certain degree Darwin's challenge to Malthusian theories.  Like Darwin, Kingsley disputes Malthus by regarding profusion and hyper-productivity as good and in his account of the evolutionary process of the once excluded Tom he challenges Malthusian social theory.  "In its unguarded and unanalytic response to Darwin's ideas and rhetoric, Kingsley's work represents the first phase of assimilation.  He grasped much of what was fresh in Darwin's ideas while at the same time retaining a creationist view of experience" (138). 
Darwin ; Evolution ; Malthus ; The Water-Babies .

Beer, Gillian.  “Kingsley: 'pebbles on the shore',” The Listener Vol. 93 (17 April, 1975): 506-7.
Beer briefly considers Kingsley’s views on the importance of catering to children’s imaginative needs.  She reviews certain attributes of The Water-Babies.  It is distressful, very funny, and full of social and political digressions; some of its episodes are cruel and make us wince; it is very sensual and crammed with physical experiences.  She discusses the important role aspects of evolutionary theory play throughout the work.  “It is hard, I think, to over-emphasise the richness of Kingsley’s recognition of mythic elements in the ideas of development and mutation, of ‘metamorphosis’ as Darwin sometimes calls it . . .”  In addition, complementing physical transformation, moral transformation, the responsibility of the individual himself, is a very significant theme in the work.  Beer also stresses that Mother Carey is a female principle of creativity, as opposed to the more usual male God.  Because of the occurrences of child death in The Water-Babies Beer views it as a kindertotenlied , “another of those attempts to give meaning to the death of children, so deeply and terribly needed by the Victorians” (507). 
The Water-Babies ; Evolution ; Females ; Child Death ; Science .

Beer, Max.  A History of British Socialism . Vol. II (London: Bell and Sons, 1929).
In his treatment of Christian Socialism Beer declares that Kingsley “thought the real battle of the time was not Radical or Whig against Peelite or Tory, but the Church, the gentleman, the workman against the shopkeepers and the Manchester School” (183). 
Christian Socialism ; Social and Political Views .

Beers, Henry Augustin. A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Gordian Press, 1966; first published 1901).
In Beer’s short consideration of  The Saint’s Tragedy he writes that the work provided a vehicle for Kingsley’s militant Protestantism and his fervent anti-Catholicism. He also argues that Kingsley intended the drama to repudiate the attraction that romance had given to medieval life. 
Saint's Tragedy, The

Bellows, Donald.  “A Study of British Conservative Reaction to the American Civil War,” The Journal of Southern History Vol. 51, No. 4. (Nov., 1985): 505-526.
Bellows declares that the racially prejudiced Kingsley believed that if the Southern states seceded in the American Civil War the slaves would be better off.  Then the South would be forced by English public opinion to treat the blacks better.  In Two Years Ago Kingsley argued that the free soil idea was preferable to slavery's abolition.  Once slavery was no longer allowed to expand, it would die. 
America ; American Civil War ; Slavery ; Racial Prejudices .

Benson, Arthur C.  “The Leaves of the Tree,” North American Review No. 669 (August 1911): 282-301.
Benson discusses Kingsley’s life, character, and works, paying particular attention to his life at Eversley.  He provides personal recollections of having met Kingsley as a child and relates other stories about Kingsley told him by his father. 
Overview ; Eversley .

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 com passion . . . . The mob enacts the very impulse, namely sacrifice, that Jesus would suspend” (89). 
Hypatia; Catholicism ; History ; Henry James .

Bevington, Merle Mowbray. The Saturday Review, 1855-1868: Representative Educated Opinion in Victorian England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941).
Bevington relates how Kingsley received sympathetic and complimentary reviews in the Saturday Review for his novels Hypatia and Two Years Ago. However, after he became Professor of History at Cambridge in 1860, historians on the Saturday mercilessly reviled his historical abilities. Hereward the Wake was particularly censured for what was considered to be its bad history. 
Saturday Review ; History Professor .

Blinderman, Charles S.  “Huxley and Kingsley,” Victorian Newsletter No. 20 (1961): 25-28.
Blinderman studies the relationship between Kingsley and T. H. Huxley.  Both men enjoyed a close personal friendship.  However, Blinderman argues that despite such surface similarities as their mutual approval of determinism and Stoicism, their dislike of Positivism, their popularization of science, and the fact that both were charged with unorthodoxy, in certain fundamental respects, particularly their underlying attitudes to science and to religion, they were quite dissimilar and distinct.  “A study of the relationship between Huxley and Kingsley suggests that while friendship can provide a forum for the cordial debate of ultimate issues, ideological differences, however, obscured by social amenities, prevail as barriers to the reconciliation of irreconcilable world-views” (28). 
Huxley ; Science ; Religion .

Blore, G. H.  “Charles Kingsley,” in his Victorian Worthies: Sixteen Biographies (London: Oxford University Press, 1920): 177-195.
Blore provides a sketch of Kingsley’s life and principal works. 
Overview .

Bloomfield, Anne.  “Muscular Christian or Mystic? Charles Kingsley Reappraised,” International Journal of the History of Sport Vol. 11, No. 2 (August 1994): 172-190.
In her treatment of Kingsley’s role in the history of human movement, sport, and aesthetic gymnastics, Bloomfield examines his mystical nature and his changing views on the religiosity of body, mind and soul.  She also hypothesizes that Kingsley’s views were influenced by the work of the Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).  She concludes that Kingsley’s work in human movement must be viewed as being more significant than his commonly accepted role in Muscular Christianity.  “Kingsley possessed a deep commitment to the mystical aspects of Christianity as well as its physical elements, and in terms of the philosophical development of human movement this accords him a place uniting two important branches of human movement, the sports ethic and the dance ethic, both of which currently stand distanced and bifurcated at polemical points within a common aesthetic field” (189). 
Muscular Christianity ; Swedenborg, Emanuel ; Sport ; Athleticism ; Sexuality .

Bodenheimer, Rosemarie.  The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988): 135-150.
Bodenheimer declares that the chaotic nature of Alton Locke is due to the novel's original composition.  It was written during 1849 and 1850 in “unchronological fragments” (135).  Kingsley displays an acute ambivalence throughout the work.  His middle class sensibility fired by class sympathy results in “something like pathology” (137).  “Alton Locke oscillates wildly between its commitment to the circumstances of working-class life and its yearning for a pastoral world, until it finally collapses into a dream vision that resolves the conflict by changing the meanings of its original terms.  In the process Kingsley inadvertently deconstructs the ideological opposition between social conflict and pastoral harmony, producing versions of pastoral that reveal on the one hand its reliance on aristocratic society and on the other its evolutionary connection with human drives to lust and power” (135). 
Alton Locke ; Social and Political Views ; Characterization in Novels .

Bradstock, Andrew.  “'A Man of God is a Holy Man': Spurgeon, Luther and 'Holy Boldness',” in Andrew Bradstock, Sean Gill, Anne Hogan, and Sue Morgan (eds.) Masculinity and Spirituality in Victorian Culture (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 2000): 209-225.
There are many references to Kingsley in this study of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, particularly with respect to the two men's views on aspects of manliness and muscular Christianity. 
Spurgeon ; Manliness ; Muscular Christianity ; Celibacy .

Brandenstein, Claudia. "Imperial Positions in Charles Kingsley's At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies ,” Span: Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies Vol. 46 (April 1998): 4-18.
Brandenstein examines Kingsley’s At Last , his account of his 1869 trip to the West Indies, and what he considered to be his role in the imperial mission.  She considers the wide range of other accounts of the West Indies drawn upon by Kingsley.  She argues that among a number of imperialist positions presented in the text is an anxious, ambivalent one, namely imperialism in peril.  “ At Last casts doubt on and indeed problematizes the imperial narrative, thereby calling into question the parameters of Kingsley’s own fictional adventure story" (13).  Moreover, “ At Last is not the type of bedtime story that Britain wants to tell itself, since in this text Britain is not fully figured as triumphant victor; its author is much too ambivalent towards the stock representations of colonialism popular at the time” (15). 
At Last ; Imperialism ; Colonialism ; Travel Writing ; West Indies ; Natural History .

Brantlinger, Patrick, “Bluebooks, the Social Organism, and the Victorian Novel,” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts Vol. XIV, No. 4 (Fall 1972): 328-344.
Brantlinger discusses how several early Victorian writers were influenced by parliamentary bluebooks and other official and social investigations.  He briefly refers to the example of Lancelot, hero of Kingsley’s Yeast who immersed himself in a plethora of bluebooks and other reports in his examination of the ‘Condition-of-the-Poor question'.  It was partly though the study of such reports that Lancelot's social conscience was stirred. 
Blue Books ; Yeast; Social and Political Novel .

Brantlinger, Patrick.  “The Case against Trade Unions in Early Victorian Fiction,” Victorian Studies Vol. XIII, No. 1 (September 1969): 37-52.
Kingsley’s reaction to the Preston Strike of 1853-54 and his views in Alton Locke, according to Brantlinger, reveal his hostility to strikes and trade unions.  The primary problem with trade unions for Kingsley is that “they are competitive rather than cooperative associations” (47). 
Alton Locke ; Social and Political Views ; Trade Unions .

Brantlinger, Patrick.  “Christian Socialism,” in The Spirit of Reform: British Literature and Politics, 1832-1867 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977): 129-149.
Brantlinger analyzes the Christian Socialist theme in Alton Locke .  He considers that there is a distinct and paradoxical duality in the novel. Alton personifies the two extremes of, on the one hand, wishing to remain faithful to his working class origins and, on the other, his desire to become one of the middle class.  "Tailor and Poet" like "Christian Socialist" is an oxymoron.  The moral of Alton Locke is not that he should adopt such working class features as Chartism and trade unionism and eschew middle class values, nor is it that he should remain fixed in his working class milieu and never seek to improve himself.  Rather Kingsley wished to point the moral "that a worker should not be ashamed of his status and that he should do whatever he can within legal and Christian boundaries to help the other members of his class" (140). 
Alton Locke ; Christian Socialism .

Brantlinger, Patrick.  The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998).
Brantlinger stresses that throughout Alton Locke Kingsley, though recognizing that the working classes are more and more literate, considers that they are not yet adequately advanced to best represent their own interests. Literacy was not in itself sufficient to cure  the social anarchy of the masses. 
Alton Locke ; Social and Political Views ; Literacy.

Brewer, Elizabeth.  “Morris and the ‘Kingsley Movement',” The Journal of the William Morris Society Vol. IV, No. 2 (Summer 1980): 4-17.
Brewer examines the possible influence Kingsley’s works may have had on Morris.  She believes that it is very difficult to specify categorically that there was a direct influence, though there are many instances where the thought of both men overlapped. She discusses, among others, the attack on celibacy and asceticism in The Saint’s Tragedy and Hypatia; Kingsley’s stress on the importance of the environment in Yeast; the socio-political ideas pervading Alton Locke ; Kingsley’s belief in the value of art, an awareness of one's heritage, and the pleasures of rural life to the ordinary working man; the use of the dream device in Alton Locke ; the romance as well as the Norse element of Hypatia.
Morris, William ; Saint’s Tragedy, The ; Hypatia ; Alton Locke ; Westward Ho! ; Yeast ; Celibacy ; Social and Political Views .

Brinton, Crane.  English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954; first published 1933).
Brinton provides an overview of Kingsley’s life and his major social and political views.  While his Christian Socialism was by no means a system, Kingsley held that a Christian Socialist society would indeed be hierarchical where each one's place is determined by his moral value as well as democratic in the sense that each one's place has been allotted by God.  Brinton considers that Kingsley’s ideal society was based on older English societies where different social classes “were knit together by habits which were genuine human relationships”.  His “programme is singularly like that of Tory Democracy” (125).  Kingsley’s paternalism did not signify that he rejected competition.  Competition was good but workers must first be members of cooperative associations, an ideal similar to “modern guild Socialism” (126).  While Brinton considers that Kingsley’s achievements were not insignificant, his ideals based on his religious faith could accomplish little to improve the very practical ills of working class and under-privileged society.  “His God, his virtue, his England, made too many promises to the flesh – promises unfulfilled to the common man.  For the uncommon man, his faith was even more inadequate.  Taste and intellect alike recoil from the simplicities of a universe on the pattern of Eversley” (130). 
Social and Political Views ; Alton Locke ; Christian Socialism ; Religion ; Science Evolution ; Democracy ; Capitalism ; Teutons .

Brock, W. H.  "Glaucus: Kingsley and the Seaside Naturalists," Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens Vol. 3 (1976): 25-36.
Brock examines Kingsley the seaside naturalist, placing him in the context of the contemporary scientific community.  Though much of his work, for example Glaucus , was derivative and popular in nature, he was a good amateur naturalist.  For two thirds of the century there were few professional natural historians.  Brock sees one of Kingsley's most significant contributions to science being his advocacy for increased science education and his desire that it be a suitable occupation for all social classes.  Science might prove an appropriate entrée for advancement into higher society for an individual barred by more traditional societal conventions.  “. . . Kingsley became a powerful spokesman for science education at a time when this was becoming an important issue among the professional scientific community” (34). 
Science ; Education ; Natural History ; Glaucus.

Brown, David.  “Prevailing Attitudes Towards Sport, Physical Exercise and Society in the 1870s: Impressions from Canadian Periodicals,” Canadian Journal of History of Sport Vol. 17, No. 2 (Dec. 1986): 58-70.
From a study of Canadian periodicals Brown concludes that there was a distinct link between, one the one hand, the prevalence in Victorian Canada of muscular Christianity and an emphasis on sport and, on the other, the works of Kingsley as well as of Thomas Hughes. 
Muscular Christianity ; Sport .

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.

Brown, W. Henry.  “Maurice, Kingsley and Hughes,” The Manchester Quarterly Vol. 51 (1925): 253-68.
Brown considers the life and works of Kingsley interweaving them with those of Maurice and Hughes.  All is laudatory with little critical analysis. 
Overview ; Hughes, Thomas ; Maurice .

Brunskill, F. R. “Charles Kingsley's Social Philosophy,” Primitive Methodist Quarterly Review Vol. 25 (April 1903): 340-349.
Brunskill gives an ornate account of Kingsley’s work on behalf of the poor and less privileged and discusses his social and political views. 
Social and Political Views ; Social and Political Novel .

Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. The Victorian Temper: A Study in Literary Culture (London: Frank Cass 1966; first published 1952).
Buckley makes numerous diverse references to Kingsley.  With respect to Kingsley’s attitude to religion and Mammon worship Buckley stresses his detestation for the manifest evils of the industrial revolution and the harm they cause to body and soul.  Yet Kingsley was assured that the new age was here to stay and that religion would aid in combating an excessive focus on materialism.  “If his victory was never won, he yet succeeded more than any other popular apologist in reminding the mid-Victorians that the objects of religion might animate their common activity no less than the lonely meditations of the brooding conscience” (123). 
Religion .

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 .

Bush, Douglas. Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937). 
Though Bush finds certain weaknesses in Andromeda, for example its excessive length, its absence of spondaic variety, and the fact that its movement is more anapestic than dactylic, he praises its sonorous perfection, its ease, its unflagging interest, as well as its Homeric echoes and similes. 
Andromeda

Byrom, Thomas.  “Introduction” to Charles Kingsley, Alton Locke: Tailor and Poet (London: Dent 1970): v-xi.
Byrom considers Alton Locke to be an ambiguous and confusing novel.  Kingsley is ambivalent about violence.  While he clearly sides with Alton and the notion of a fighting working class, he also agrees with the orderly and conservative ideals of an aristocracy enlightened by the Church.  Kingsley is surprising in leaving Catholicism relatively untouched; rather it is the dissenters, especially the Baptists, who receive a harsh criticism.  Also, the Tractarians are criticized as is Transcendentalism which Byrom considers Kingsley failed to understand properly.  Unlike Yeast which suffered from an excessive authorial presence, the autobiographical mode of Alton Locke results in a work more a novel than a tract.  Byrom concludes that Alton Locke, though entertaining, “is only a fitful success.  Reading it is rather like watching a film in which much of the footage is out of focus” (ix).  Though it is primarily to be considered a failure when compared to the works of Dickens, this is instructive.  “Alton Locke was written when English fiction enjoyed its greatest moment, and without it we should have a harder time understanding the achievement of Dickens, who in so many respects shared the conservative, reforming, doubting, bitter, compassionate sensibility of the stuttering Rector of Eversley” (x). 
Alton Locke ; Dissent ; Transcendentalism ; Dickens ; Social and Political Views .

Calder, Jenni.  Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976).
Kingsley, writes Calder, viewed the home as the primary place for women.  Middle class women might do good work on behalf of the underprivileged but they should never neglect their own families.  “. . . fundamentally he could see no other role for them in the state except as educators of womanhood” (76). 
Females .

Carnell, Corbin Scott. "Charles Kingsley," in Dictionary of Literary Biography , Volume 178: British Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writers Before World War I.  Ed. by Darren Harris-Fain (Detroit: Gale, 1997): 132-138.
Carnell provides a bibliography of Kingsley’s own works, a brief bibliography of secondary material, an overview of his life and works with a focus on his fantasy work The Water-Babies.   His assessment: “Charles Kingsley can be considered a competent novelist, an engaging writer of sermons, and the author of a significant work of fantasy.  His lively engagement with the issues of his day will make his life and ideas of interest even as his writings are read with declining frequency” (138). 
Overview ; The Water-Babies .

Carpenter, Humphrey.  “Parson Lot Takes a Cold Bath: Charles Kingsley and The Water-Babies ,” in his Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s Literature (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985): 23-43.
In this chapter Carpenter provides an overview of Kingsley’s life and works.  He suggests that Kingsley’s overt heterosexuality may not have been so real as he indicates in his letters to his wife.  He praises The Water-Babies for its innovation and readability but considers that it is also greatly muddled by its multitudinous social and political commentaries.  Quite different from anything else in the history of children’s literature, declares Carpenter, “it was both brilliant and a failure, self-contradictory, muddled, inspiring, sentimental, powerfully argumentative, irrationally prejudiced, superbly readable” (24). 
Overview ; Children ; Sexuality ; The Water-Babies .

Carpenter, S. C.  Church and People, 1789-1889: A History of the Church of England from William Wilberforce to “Lux Mundi” (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1933).
Carpenter frequently mentions Kingsley in his study, paying particular attention to his activities as a parson in Eversley. 
Parson, Kingsley as ; Eversley .

Cazamian, Louis.  The Social Novel in England 1830-1850: Dickens, Disraeli, Mrs. Gaskell, Kingsley Trans. Martin Fido (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973; first published in French in 1903).
Cazamian provides a lengthy examination of Kingsley's life and works, focusing on his Christian Socialist activities and, particularly, on how Christian Socialism is represented in his novels, Yeast and Alton Locke .  Cazamian considers Kingsley a "gifted writer" who employs these novels as a "propaganda vehicle" to describe the age's "most vital aims and ideals" (241). 
Overview ; Social and Political Views ; Christian Socialism ; Alton Locke ; Yeast; Novels .

Chadwick, Owen.  "Charles Kingsley at Cambridge," The Historical Journal Vol. XVIII, No. 2 (1975): 303-325.
Chadwick examines Kingsley’s time at Cambridge both as an undergraduate and as the Regius Chair of Modern History.  In addition to considering the circumstances of his election as Professor and the reactions of University personnel and the wider community, Chadwick discusses such topics as his pedagogical abilities, the responses of the students, the content of his lectures, and his philosophy of history.  Chadwick also intersperses accounts of many of Kingsley’s views on, for example, Catholicism, Newman, science, evolution, sanitation, sexuality, muscular Christianity, together with brief treatments of some of his novels.  He concludes: “But unsophisticated, no; natural, only when he intended naturalness; innocent, not merely no but quite the opposite – who would have thought the good man to have so much blood in his fancy?  If you go along with Kingsley until you begin to know him, you wonder whether this unsubtle man was not one of the most complicated souls you ever met” (325). 
Overview ; Cambridge University ; History Professor ; History ; Social and Political Views .

Chadwick, Owen. “Kingsley’s Chair,” Theology Vol. LXXVIII, No. 655 (Jan., 1975): 2-8.
In this brief article Chadwick considers the background to Kingsley being offered the Regius Chair of Modern History at Cambridge.  He also posits that later critics have tended to be unfair in their critical accounts of him as a scholar of history. Though Kingsley was no Creighton nor Acton, he was better than Goldwin Smith, his contemporary at Oxford.  Moreover, Kingsley was well appreciated by Cambridge's undergraduates. 
History ; Cambridge University ; History Professor .

Chadwick, Owen.  The Victorian Church . Part II.  2nd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972; first published 1970).
Chadwick discusses the Kingsley-Newman controversy, stressing that Kingsley was heavily outmatched by his opponent.  In response to certain critics who felt that Kingsley had been excessively treated in the Apologia , Newman made changes in subsequent editions and the title became History of my religious opinions .  “By these alterations and change of title he aimed to leave Kingsley behind, to remove the occasion of writing and lift the book above the controversy which produced it” (415). 
Newman Controversy .

Chapman, Edward Mortimer.  English Literature in Account with Religion 1800-1900 (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910).
Chapman devotes several pages to a cursory outline of Kingsley’s life and works. 
Overview .

Chapman, Raymond.  The Victorian Debate: English Literature and Society 1832-1901 (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
Chapman briefly discusses Kingsley’s major social and political novels, Yeast (1848), Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet (1850), Hypatia (1853), and Two Years Ago (1857).  He also mentions The Water Babies (1863) for its treatment of child labor and social justice.  Chapman declares that Kingsley wrote in fiction about some of the topics with which Maurice was dealing in more theological terms.  “From Maurice he learned that the needs of the time could be a pragmatic sanction for Christianity; from Carlyle, how to subordinate reason to emotion.  The combination was, to say the least, a lively one.  Like Samuel Butler, so different in other ways, Kingsley wrote best about those things which he had made into a personal grievance” (135). 
Social and Political Novel ; Yeast ; Alton Locke ; Hypatia ; Two Years Ago ; The Water Babies .

“Charles Kingsley and Bramshill House,” The Police College Magazine Vol. 8, No. 3 (Autumn 1964): 202-207.
Discusses the circumstances of how Kingsley was instituted into the living at Eversley, “circumstances which, for comedy in clerical life, surpass any situation depicted by Trollope or George Eliot” (202).  Also discusses the relationship of Kingsley, Rector of Eversley, with the lords of the manor of Bramshill, Sir John Cope and Sir William Cope respectively. 
Eversley ; Bramshill House .

Charques, R. D., Mrs.  “Kingsley as Children’s Writer,” Times Literary Supplement Vol. 2576 (15 June, 1951): i
In this short article, Charques discusses Kingsley's writings for children as well as his attitudes towards and his understanding of children.  She also touches briefly on his educational views. 
Children ; The Water-Babies ; Education .

Childers, Joseph W.  “Alton Locke and the Religion of Chartism,” in Novel Possibilities: Fiction and the Formation of Early Victorian Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995): 132-157.
In his analysis of Alton Locke Childers focuses in particular on the relationship between politics and religion. He argues that the spiritual reform advocated, the "religion of Chartism", alleviates the fear of the middle classes of a revolt based on immorality or infidelity, since the reform is strongly linked to the tenets of religion, of Christianity.  However, the advocacy has little social value as long as it remains the subjective view only of Alton.  For real change to be effected, these views must be embraced by a wider public. 
Alton Locke ; Religion ; Chartism ; Social and Political Novel .

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 .

Chitty, Susan.  Charles Kingsley’s Landscape (Newton Abbot; North Pomfret, Vt.: David and Charles, 1976).
The first part of this work is essentially a biography of Kingsley with particular focus on the places he lived and visited, especially those in Devon. Most of the second part is an examination of the places, again mainly in Devon, mentioned in his works, particularly Westward Ho! , Two Years Ago , and The Water-Babies . 
Overview ; Devon ; Westward Ho! ; Two Years Ago ; The Water-Babies .

Christensen, Allan Conrad. Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Contagion: Our Feverish Contact. London: Routledge, 2005.
This book is an examination of “how the contagion of the historical moment infiltrates human relationships in such activities as military struggles, clothes-making and dressing, medical practice, love affairs, financial transactions and the use of language. . . . Drawing on recent literary theorists, Christensen suggests the permeability of the boundaries between [the examined] texts, which merge into a single narrative or grand récit of history at work” (frontispiece). Christensen makes extensive reference to Kingsley’s novel Two Years Ago throughout the work and there are also a number of allusions to Alton Locke.
Sanitation; Two Years Ago; Health.

Christensen, Allan C.  “Sick Mothers and Daughters: Symptoms of Cultural Disorder in Novels by Manzoni, Dickens, Kingsley, Bulwer-Lytton, James,” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani Vol. 7, No. 4 (January 1999): 5-32.
Christensen discusses the relationship of mother and daughter in Two Years Ago in the context of  society's "sick cultural system" (6).  “The passionate reunification of mother and daughter thus comes to typify not only the event that will restore health to a particular plague-stricken culture but also the redemption of the human race” (26). 
Two Years Ago ; Mothers and Daughters ; Females ; Social and Political Views .

Christensen, Torben.  Origin and History of Christian Socialism 1848-1854   (Aarhus, Denmark: Universitetsforlaget, 1962).
In his study of Christian Socialism Christensen makes frequent mention of Kingsley, focusing in particular on his activities in the Chartist movement and as the author of Alton Locke.
Christian Socialism ; Chartism ; Alton Locke .

Coleman, Dorothy.  “Rabelais and The Water-Babies ,” Modern Language Review Vol. 66, No. 3 (July 1971): 511-21.
Coleman examines the influence of Rabelais on Kingsley and, more specifically, discusses Rabelaisian themes, echoes, and style in The Water-Babies . 
Rabelais ; The Water-Babies .

Coles, Nicholas.  "Charles Kingsley," in Dictionary of Literary Biography , Volume 32: Victorian Poets Before 1850 . Edited by William E. Fredeman (Detroit: Gale, 1984): 182-190.
In this DLB chapter Coles provides an overview of Kingsley’s life interspersed with a review of his writings, particularly his poetry.  There is a bibliography of Kingsley’s own works together with a short secondary bibliography.  There are also several illustrations.  Coles writes that “Kingsley’s literary career was marked by oscillation among genres rather than by steady development: his dominant themes, however, remained constant.  He was only occasionally a poet and, after a bout of experimentation, worked most successfully in simple established forms.  His longest-lasting pieces were the lyrics which John Hullah set to music” (189). 
Overview ; Poetry ; Saint’s Tragedy, The .

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 .

Colloms, Brenda. “Charles Kingsley, Poet and Social Reformer,” RSV: Rivista di Studi Vittoriani Vol. 1, No. 2 (July 1996): 23-47.
In a lengthy article Colloms provides a sketch of Kingsley’s life, character, and works, concentrating on his poetry.  She praises in particular the “disturbing and powerful” poem “St. Maura” but declares that Kingsley will be remembered by the general public for his shorter poems (36).  She also lauds Kingsley for having added the topic of social problems to the scope of the popular novel. 
Overview ; Poetry ; Social and Political Views .

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.

Cosslett, Tess. “Child's Place in Nature: Talking Animals in Victorian Children's Fiction,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts Vol. 23, No. 4 (2001): 475-495.
In her article discussing the close link between children and animals in the nineteenth century, Cosslett briefly considers the evolutionary model employed by Kingsley in The Water-Babies. 
Evolution; The Water-Babies .

Courtney, Janet E.  “Charles Kingsley,” Fortnightly Review Vol. 105 (Jan-June 1919): 949-957.
In the centenary year of Kingsley’s birth Courtney offers a brief general outline of the author’s life and principal works.  She praises Kingsley’s historical novels for their readability though acknowledging the presence of many didactic passages.  She criticizes, however, the modern novels, i.e. Yeast, Two Years Ago, and Alton Locke for their old-fashionedness.  Their chief merit lies in their treatment of social questions rather in their literary skill.  On the other hand, Courtney lauds the children’s stories for their charm and ability to delight. Courtney also discusses the somewhat overlooked study of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, The Saint’s Tragedy (1848).  Though stressing the great interest and attention Kingsley paid to this early work, Courtney criticizes its pervasive didacticism.  “It is a sermon against monkishness and in praise of wedded love, more interesting to read, no doubt, than Kingsley’s sermons strictly so-called, but it does not differ from them essentially” (954). 
Overview ; Saint’s Tragedy, The ; Social and Political Novel .

Coveney, Peter. Poor Monkey: The Child in Literature (London: Rockliff, 1957).
Coveney examines Kingsley’s depiction of the child in Alton Locke, declaring that he succeeds in conveying a young child’s consciousness better than Disraeli or Mrs. Gaskell. In Kingsley’s work “the concept of the romantic child merges with Christianity into a theology of childhood innocence. Alton Locke is an interesting fusion of Wordsworthian naturalism with Christian humanitarianism, a fusion of the secular romantic tradition about the child with Anglican compassion for human nature; a fusion which Kingsley perhaps best expressed in his Water Babies ." 
Children; The Water-Babies .

Cowling, Maurice. Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England. 3 Vols. Vol. III: Accommodations (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Provides a brief overview of Kingsley's religious views, especially as revealed in his novels. 
Religion

Cripps, Elizabeth A. "Introduction," Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983): vii-xx.
Cripps introduces Alton Locke by considering the context of the troubled Chartist times in which it was both written and set.  She also briefly discusses the novel's publication history, its reception by the critics, and its representation of many of Kingsley's social and political views.  She regrets on literary grounds that Kingsley revised the Cambridge part of the novel.  Praising for the most part the characterization in the novel, Cripps also lauds its graphic depictions. 
Alton Locke ; Chartism ; Social and Political Novel ; Social and Political Views ; Cambridge University ; Characterization in Novels . 

Cripps, Elizabeth A.  “Lewis Carroll, and Charles and Henry Kingsley,” Jabberwocky: The Journal of the Lewis Carroll Society Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer 1980): 59-66.
Cripps considers data relating to three topics in this article: Carroll's knowledge of and interest in Kingsley and his works; Carroll's friendship with Henry Kingsley; and the parallels between The Water-Babies and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. With respect to the parallels, Cripps cautions about talking of influences, declaring that it is quite likely that two authors, themselves the product of similar backgrounds, should sometimes use the same ideas when composing a children's story. 
Carroll, Lewis ; The Water-Babies ; Kingsley, Henry .

Cunningham, Valentine.  Everywhere Spoken Against: Dissent in the Victorian Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
Mentions of Kingsley's generally critical views on Dissent occur frequently in this work. 
Dissent .

Cunningham, Valentine.  “Goodness and Goods: Victorian Literature and Values for the Middle Class Reader,” Proceedings of the British Academy Vol. 78 (1992): 109-27.
Cunningham considers the treatment in Victorian literature of the relationship between the good and goods, between industrialism and its societal effects, especially those on the poor.  He declares that Kingsley was conflicted by the two sides.  On the one hand, Kingsley believed that a modernizing England required industrialism.  On the other, he was adamant that those adversely affected by industry's foul effects had to be rescued. 
Social and Political Views ; Industrialism .

Cunningham, Valentine. "Soiled Fairy: The Water-Babies in its Time," Essays in Criticism Vol. XXXV, No. 2 (April 1985): 121-48.
Cunningham analyzes many of the causes and issues Kingsley treats with heat and hysteria in The Water-Babies declaring that they frequently coincide with the age’s heatedness and hysterias for these causes and issues.  Cunningham also discusses The Water-Babies’ various affinities to other classic fairy-story motifs. 
The Water-Babies ; Social and Political Views ; Fairy-Story Motifs ; Sanitation ; Cheap Clothes and Nasty ; Glaucus; Religion .

Curtis, S. J., and M. E. A. Boultwood. An Introductory History of English Education Since 1800 (London: University Tutorial Press, 1962).
This is a very brief overview of Kingsley as educationalist.  The authors declare that because of his early connections with St. Mark’s Training College, Chelsea, Kingsley tended to have greater awareness of practical educational matters than some of the more subject oriented educationalists. 
Education .

Darton, F. J. Harvey.  Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life. 3rd ed. (London: British Library, 1999): 252-255.
Darton considers that The Water-Babies and other of Kingsley’s writings were flawed because of the author’s tendency to preach and to aim at a moral purpose.  However, he also praises Kingsley’s fine imagination and pure simplicity. 
The Water-Babies ; Children ; Didacticism .

Daumas, Phillippe.  “Charles Kingsley's Style in Alton Locke ,” Les Langues Modernes Vol. 63 (1969): 169-75.
Daumas argues that due to Kingsley’s conflicting views on Chartism there is a certain mystification in Alton Locke .  Though the novel seems to be an advocacy of Chartism and social reform, the reader when finished understands that it is really an espousal of charity and Christianity.  “Contrary to what one had been led to think, Alton Locke is not a tract in support of socialism, but a vindication of Kingsley’s own conception of Christianity” (169). 
Alton Locke ; Chartism ; Social and Political Views ; Religion .

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.

Dawson, W. J.  "Charles Kingsley," in The Makers of English Fiction. 2nd ed. (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1905): 179-190.
In this overview of Kingsley's life and works Dawson assigns Kingsley a high place in the secondary order of novelists, declaring that his failure to attain the highest rank is due to his versatility. While Dawson considers that none of his novels were as fine as The Cloister and the Hearth or Lorna Doone, he deems that Kingsley exerted a greater influence on his age than either Reade or Blackmoore, "an influence subtle and peculiar, based in part on personality, in part on the nature of his message" (179). 
Overview ; Novels .

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 .

Derbyshire, John. “Charles Kingsley: Divine Love, Divine Order.” The New Criterion 25, no. 1 (September 2006): 58-64. 
This is a short, outline article that gives a sketch of Kingsley’s life and works.
Overview.

Devonshire, M. G.  The English Novel in France: 1830-1870 (New York: Octagon Books, 1967).
Devonshire discusses the reception of Alton Locke, Yeast, Westward Ho!, and Two Years Ago in France during the third quarter of the nineteenth century and provides short extracts from some of the reviews. The French, declares Devonshire, did indeed praise Kingsley for the literary value of the novels, though they objected to the excessive sermonizing.  However, the main interest of the French lay in the novels’ social, political, and historical background and their attitude to reform rather than in the actual stories. 
France, Critical Reception in ; Alton Locke ; Yeast ; Westward Ho! ; Two Years Ago .

Dobrzycka, Irena. The Conditions of Living of the Working Class in the Social Novels of Charles Kingsley (Poznan: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1955).
In her treatment of Kingsley’s social and political views, especially as presented in such novels as Yeast and Two Years Ago, Dobrzycka focuses on what she perceives as Kingsley’s reactionary bourgeois ideology. Still, despite his feudalistic views, Dobrzycka praises the realistic portrayal by this “bard of imperialism”of the living conditions of the proletariat in these novels. She also lauds his vehement criticism of agrarian misery and his advocacy of sanitary reform. 
Social and Political Views ; Working-Class life, Depiction of ; Yeast; Two Years Ago ; Sanitation.

Dodd, Philip.  “Gender and Cornwall: Charles Kingsley to Daphne du Maurier,”  in K. D. M. Snell (ed.) The Regional Novel in Britain and Ireland, 1800-1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 119-135.
Dodd declares that the West Country in Two Years Ago is a region signifying for Kingsley a “forward-looking, confident masculinity” (125).  Its manly Protestant values complement the muscular Tom Thurnall while the London world is the appropriate place for the effete poet Elsley Vavasour. 
Two Years Ago ; Cornwall ; Devon ; Manliness .

Dorman, Susann.  “Hypatia and Callista : The Initial Skirmish between Kingsley and Newman,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction Vol. 34, No. 2 (September 1979): 173-193.
Dorman argues that the battle lines of the 1864 Kingsley-Newman controversy were drawn a decade earlier in the two ideologically opposite novels, Kingsley’s Hypatia and Newman’s Callista.  “. . . it is clear that the seed of the 1864 conflict which culminated in Newman’s personally triumphant Apologia Pro Vita Sua is deeply rooted in the philosophical antithesis between the novels Hypatia and Callista” (193).  Dorman also suggests that the criticism Kingsley received from Pusey for his novel’s alleged immorality, and his subsequent humiliation, strengthened his resolve not to be humiliated afresh years later but to make a strong attack on Newman in his 1864 pamphlet. 
Newman Controversy ; Hypatia .

Dottin, Françoise.  “Chartism and Christian Socialism in Alton Locke ,” Politics in Literature in the Nineteenth Century (Lille: Centre d'Etudes Victoriennes, U. de Lille, 1974): 31-59.
Dottin discusses Kingsley's social and political views as represented in Alton Locke, especially those relating to Chartism and Christian Socialism, as well as his own practical endeavors in these areas. She concludes that while Kingsley is somewhat difficult to categorize, he is "neither a revolutionary nor a fawning aristocrat", and that he is best described by the two words Christian and socialist (54). 
Alton Locke ; Chartism ; Christian Socialism ; Social and Political Views ; Social and Political Novel .

Downes, David Anthony.  “Reverend Charles Kingsley: Prophet of Convulsion,” in The Temper of Victorian Belief: Studies in the Religious Novels of Pater, Kingsley, and Newman (New York: Twayne, 1972): 48-81.
Downes examines Kingsley’s style, which he terms “plain prophecy”, and his religious views.  He also discusses differences in style and temper between Kingsley and Newman, arguing that time has effected a “monumental irony on historical and critical judgment”.  He considers Newman to be a “medieval personalist” whereas Kingsley is a “prophetical modernist” (81). Hypatia , argues Downes from his lengthy treatment of the novel, “represents Kingsley’s search for a way of expressing how religious faith in Christianity happens, and what it means in the most concrete personalist terms his imagination would conjure.  However philosophically vague, there is an attempt at a kind of phenomenology of faith, what Newman called ‘a grammar of assent.’  The tenability of Christianity as believable by people encountering their worlds on the most basic human levels is what Kingsley was striving to examine” (79). 
Religion ; Newman ; Hypatia; History .

Edwards, David Lawrence.  Leaders of the Church of England, 1828-1944 (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1971).
Edwards declares that Kingsley’s courage in writing his manifesto on 10 April, 1848 at the time of the Chartist upheaval has been exaggerated.  Many other preachers and religious journalists sympathized with the social and political sentiments of Kingsley, Maurice, et al.  However, Kingsley was indeed courageous in going further than merely sympathizing with the demands of the workers.  He actually worked alongside them and “it was this that in the 1850s brought on Kingsley, and on Maurice, the wrath of the religious Tories of the Record and the Quarterly Review – and of secularists such as Karl Marx who feared competition from the Christian Socialists’ ‘holy water’” (136). 
Social and Political Views ; Chartism .

Elton, Oliver. A Survey of English Literature 1830-1880. Vol. II. 309-316. London: Edward Arnold, 1920.
Elton presents a broad overview of Kingsley’s life and works. Yeast is not really a novel but “a kind of pamphlet-fantasy” in which the authorial commentary renders Kingsley himself the most distinct character (310). However, the work reveals promise of the future novelist. The true power of Alton Locke lies in its pictures rather than its ideas. Hypatia is praised for its drama and the passion and action of the story. Westward Ho!, more “a saga than a novel with a plot” (311), is lauded for its action, its enthusiasm, and its fine scene painting. Though Two Years Ago has excessive moralizing, “Kingsley is himself again whenever he gets back to landscape or to narrative” (312). Hereward the Wake suffers from a surfeit of the professor and a paucity of the artist. The Heroes receives high praise for its style, its descriptions, its appeal to children. Elton also lauds Kingsley’s “fervid picturesqueness” in a number of his shorter works, particularly his naturalist depictions in At Last. The Water-Babies though popular “is a good book badly spoilt” (314). Elton commends Kingsley’s poetic power, particularly his lyric and narrative poems. “He is one of the few poets of the time who make us wish cordially that he had written more” (315). 
Overview; Novels; Poetry.

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.

Evans, Rosemary.  “Hereward the Wake : An Introduction,” Aberdeen University Review Vol. 49, No. 166 (Autumn 1981): 76-79.
Evans is fulsome in her praise of Hereward the Wake (1866).  She admires its absolutely natural dialogue, its splendidly real characterization; its historical accuracy that is as correct as is reasonably possible; its fine drama, its succinctness of writing; its beauty.  “. . . the result is one of the finest novels in our literature – and one, alas, that has been passed over and neglected” (76).
Hereward the Wake .

Faber, Richard.  Proper Stations: Class in Victorian Fiction (London: Faber and Faber, 1971). 
Faber discusses Kingsley’s views on class relations focusing in particula