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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
 

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 .
 

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 .
 

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 .
 

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 .
 

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 .
 

Fasick, Laura.  "Charles Kingsley's Scientific Treatment of Gender," in Hall, Donald E. (ed.).  Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 91-113.
Laura Fasick examines Kingsley's representations of women against the background of the age's scientific theories, considering that his depiction of disease, unsanitary conditions, and bodily ill-treatment in his novels represents an attempt to define strict gender distinctions.  She argues that "The 'factual' basis on which Kingsley founded his concern for the maintenance of distinct gender roles was not only scientific, but specifically hygienic. . . . Kingsley is as obsessed with sexuality, for him sanctified by monogamous marriage, as with hygiene, and these interests effectively merge into one" (91). 
Females ; Sexuality; Sanitation ; Science .
 

Fasick, Laura. "No Higher Love: Clerical Domesticity in Kingsley and Eliot." Victorian Newsletter Vol. 48, No. 100 (2001): 1-5. 
Fasick argues that two writers as different as Kingsley, an ordained Anglican minister, and George Eliot, an agnostic, domesticated clergymen in their fictional representation of them. Both writers, accepting the Victorian stress on the domesticity of religion, transferred the priest’s most important realm of action from public reform to that of domestic virtue. Moreover, Kingsley and Eliot underscore the priest’s romantic and sexual life, especially when fulfilled in marriage and parenthood, as an important aspect of his human and moral development. Such development can never be enhanced by celibacy.
Catholicism ; Religion ; Sexuality ; George Eliot ; Celibacy.
 

Fasick, Laura. “The Seduction of Celibacy: Threats to Male Sexual Identity in Charles Kingsley’s Writings,” in Jay Losey and William D. Brewer (eds.) Mapping Male Sexuality: Nineteenth Century England ( Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000): 215-232.
Fasick considers the long English tradition that strong sexual interest in females is injurious to true manliness. However, she argues that a strong basis for Kingsley’s anti-Catholic writings and his altercation with Newman was his conviction that Roman Catholic celibacy rather than sexual indulgence was frequently a source for effeminacy. Kingsley, an ardent advocate of marriage, was convinced that sexual abstinence took away from man’s masculinity as well as posed both physical and spiritual dangers. For Kingsley celibacy was all too often an act of self indulgence rather than one of self denial.
Manliness; Sexuality ; Celibacy ;  Newman ; Catholicism
 

Gay, Peter. The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud. Vol. II.  The Tender Passion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
Gay discusses Kingsley’s strong preoccupation with sex as practiced in his own personal life, the erotic origins of his love of nature, and his conviction of the theological importance of the sexual function in marriage. Gay also considers Fanny Kingsley’s own keen sexual appetites.
Sexuality ; Kingsley, Fanny .
 

Haley, Bruce.  The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).
Haley in discussing Kingsley's confrontation with Newman focuses on his complex relationship with the notion of muscular Christianity.  Kingsley disliked the term and found offensive such critics as T. C. Sanders and Fitzjames Stephen who stressed the "muscular" aspect of his Christianity. Still, Kingsley strongly believed that the spiritual life was very compatible with both a sexual and a vigorous, active, sporting life.  Haley declares that he found philosophical justification for this attitude in three of Carlyle's theories: "the body is an expression of spirit, and therefore the obedience to healthy impulse is a sign of constitutional harmony; the state of health is a knowledge of the laws of nature and a compliance with these laws; and heroism is a life of action made possible by observing the laws of health" (111-112). 
Newman Controversy ; Muscular Christianity ; Sexuality ; Health ; Carlyle .
 

Hawley, John C., S.J. “Newman the Novelist,” America Vol. 163, No. 18 (Dec 8, 1990): 455-457.
Hawley contrasts the opinions of Kingsley and Newman on marriage, sexuality, and celibacy especially as these are presented in their literary works. "In Loss and Gain and Callista Newman enshrined celibacy as a prophetic witness to the spiritual life.  Kingsley countered in his seven novels with his enshrinement of marriage as the highest Christian vocation, and coupled his praise with portrayals of celibate men and women who were fearful, untrustworthy and effeminate" (457).
Newman ; Hypatia ; Saint's Tragedy, The ; Sexuality ; Celibacy .
 

Lankewish, Vincent A.  “Love Among the Ruins: The Catacombs, the Closet, and the Victorian ‘Early Christian’ Novel,” Victorian Literature and Culture Vol.  28, No. 2 (Sept 2000): 239-273.
Lankewish considers the Newman-Kingsley debate in the context of Kingsley's antipathy to what he perceived as Catholics' unnatural attitude toward sex, especially the Tractarian and Catholic depiction of Christ as spouse, and their embrace of celibacy which Kingsley frequently regarded as effeminacy. Kingsley, declares Lankewish, believed that it was only through such relations as marriage, parenthood, and family that God could be truly known.  Lankewish also discusses Newman's possible homosexuality and Kingsley's attitude to it.  He argues that a consideration of the sexual context of the Newman-Kingsley dispute provides a useful background to the study of the Victorian Early Christian novel. He contends, in particular, "that the Hypatia/Callista conflict not only anticipated the theological debate that erupted between Kingsley and Newman in 1864, but foreshadowed the gender and sexual tensions inherent within that debate as well.  Through the representation of the spiritual marriages between Christians and Christ that Kingsley found so deplorable, Early Christian novels by Wiseman, Newman, and Pater coopt the genre and transform it into a charged site for the articulation of sexual difference and, most specifically in Pater's case, of male-male desire" (252). 
Newman Controversy ; Hypatia ; Sexuality ; Celibacy ; Religion .
 

Maynard, John.  “Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion,” University of Hartford Studies in Literature Vol. 19, Nos 2 & 3 (1987): 61-69.
For Kingsley, according to Maynard, religion and sexuality are thoroughly intermingled.  His dislike of Newman stemmed in large part from his strong aversion to religious celibacy.  However, all forms of sexual license for Kingsley were anathema.  The proper place for sexuality was within marriage, with only one marriage in a lifetime.  “Celibacy is religion without sex; licentiousness, sex without religion.  The via media for Kingsley, married religious sexuality, allows one unified discourse: married sexuality repairs the Fall and leads us from earth to heaven, which is only more – and more intensely – of the same” (63).  Kingsley also depicts competing types of sexuality in certain of his writings.  For example, in Hypatia the struggle between the intellectual views of different religious groups in 5th century Alexandria may be seen as just as much a competition of opposite sexual styles.  Similarly, Westward Ho! may be understood from the standpoint of opposite sexual religious world views as the conflict “between chaste, successful Protestants and lewd, unsuccessful Spanish Catholics” (64). 
Religion ; Sexuality ; Celibacy ; Hypatia ; Westward Ho! .
 

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 .
 

Rosen, David. "The Volcano and the Cathedral: Muscular Christianity and the Origins of Primal Manliness," in Hall, Donald E. (ed.). Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 17-44.
David Rosen provides a lengthy analysis of the development of Kingsley's views on muscular Christianity and manliness. He stresses that these were complex, many-sided notions and that Kingsley's views on these topics, as well as his practical involvement in complementary areas, continuously evolved throughout his life. Rosen argues that among the many influences on Kingsley's concept of manliness was the notion of Platonic thumos which Kingsley considered was a primal manly force, the root of all virtue and which was manifested through sex, fighting, and morality. Rosen contends that Kingsley's views on manliness and related topics were highly influential and that diverse notions of Anglo-American masculinity from the mid-nineteenth century to the present owe much to Kingsley. 
Manliness ; Muscular Christianity ; Sexuality ; Plato ; Carlyle ; Hughes, Thomas .
 

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 .