Kingsley C
Kingsley, Charles.
ACHIEVEMENTS: Promoted Christian Socialism
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 12th June 1819, in Holne, Devon, England.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 23rd January 1875, in Eversley, Hampshire, England. Aged 56.
DISCIPLINE: Clergyman and writer.
FIELD: Christian Socialism and literature.
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: Charles Kingsley and Mary Lucas.
SIBLINGS: Herbert and Gerald.
SPOUSE: Fanny Grenfell.
CHILDREN: Maurice, Grenville, Rose and Mary.
EDUCATION: Preparatory school, Bristol; Helston Grammar School, Devon; King's College, London; Magdalene College, Cambridge University.
MAJOR WORK:
‘The Water-Babies’ (1863); ‘Yeast’ (1848); ‘Alton Locke’ (1850).
LIFE AND TIMES: After his graduation in 1842, Kingsley became curate of the church in Eversley, Hampshire where, two years later, he took over as Rector. As well as being an active churchman, Kingsley worked on a play, published in 1848, about the life of St Elizabeth of Hungary.
The play, reviewed in Germany as well as England, caused controversy among religious intellectuals in Oxford, because in it Kingsley attacked the ascetic movements within the Anglican Church which, he believed, led to an inflated idea of self-sacrifice.
Around this time, he regularly visited London to get spiritual advice from Frederick Denison Maurice, the Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn Law College and author of ‘Kingdom of Christ’. Maurice was a leading advocate of Christian Socialism, originally developed by the French thinker, Saint-Simon*, whose ideas had been spread in England by the writer Carlyle*, a friend of Maurice.
Kingsley became a member of the group of Maurice’s followers, who wanted to involve the Church of England in contemporary social and political issues and believed that advances in science and technology could be used as a force to improve society. Those were views that were later taken up, around the end of the century, by Rauschenbusch* in the US.
After taking a job as visiting professor of English Literature at the new Queen's College for Women, London, Kingsley agreed to promote the views of the Christian Socialists in print. His first contribution appeared in the journal ‘Politics for the People’ in May 1848, under the pseudonym 'Parson Lot'.
Another article that Kingsley wrote at the time praised the British Museum for its policy of free admission, allowing culture to be available to even the poorest and he was one of the first people to propose that modern science museums should be established.
In 1848, Kingsley’s novel ‘Yeast’ was published anonymously as a serial in ‘Fraser's Magazine’. The novel explored the relationship between landowners and their poor tenants and he included a long poem, ‘The Poacher's Widow’, about the harsh life of agricultural labourers and the injustices they suffered at the hands of gamekeepers and landowners.
The publication of Kingsley’s social criticisms met a lot of opposition from the establishment and the publishers refused to print any more of his work. He then gave his support to the Chartists (members of a working class movement that campaigned for universal suffrage and other parliamentary reforms).
Kingsley’s next novel, ‘Alton Locke’, published in 1850, told the story of a tailor-poet working in a London sweatshop, who became a Chartist leader. In both ‘Yeast’ and ‘Alton Locke’, Kingsley proposed that the educated upper classes had a responsibility for improving the lives of the workers in various ways, advocating sanitary improvements, adult education and the growth of the co-operative movement.
Kingsley went on to help set up the journal ‘Christian Socialist’ and to organize the Society for the Promotion of Working Men's Associations. In 1851, the Bishop of London banned Kingsley from ever preaching in his diocese again, after he had presented his controversial sermon, ‘The Message of the Church to the Labouring Man’.
In the same year he wrote a historical novel, ‘Hypatia’, about fifth-century Alexandria. It was published in 1853, followed two years later by ‘Westward Ho’, a story of the conflict between sixteenth century Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
He went back to writing about contemporary themes and, in 1857, he published ‘Two Years Ago’, a novel about the Crimean War* that emphasised the need for public health and sanitation. As well as novels, Kingsley wrote poetry and, in 1858, he published ‘Andromeda and other Poems’, considered be one of his best verse works.
The story of Andromeda and Perseus, a popular one in Victorian times, was used by his friend Robert Browning* as well. Both men dedicated their poems to their wives and both made an analogy between the story of Andromeda's rescue and their common experience of their families disapproving of their courtship.
In 1859, Kingsley was given the job of chaplain to Queen Victoria* but his interests didn’t end with the church. At the time, he was a keen student of natural science and his group of friends included Lyell*.
Despite popular debate that geology, Bible studies and natural science threatened the unquestioning religious faith of many of his contemporaries, Kingsley remained a committed Christian. He was one of the few leading people of his time who could accept the ideas of writers like Charles Darwin*, while still being able to reconcile them with their own faith.
Kingsley supported Darwin’s theory of natural selection in the story of Tom, the young chimney sweep, in his novel, ‘The Water-Babies’, published in 1863, although applying it to the moral rather than the physical universe.
The following year Kingsley became Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. He had always been an opponent of the high church Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement, led by Newman* and he offended Newman when he made a few ill-judged remarks in a book review.
This caused a disagreement between them that led to the famous ‘Apologia pro Vita Sua' by Newman in 1864, in which he told the story of his religious development. Kingsley countered this by expressing anti-Catholic sentiment in his third historical novel, ‘Hereward the Wake’, set in Anglo-Saxon England at the time of the Norman Conquest and published in 1866.
In 1869, he became Canon of Chester and there, he started up a botany class that developed into the Chester Natural History Society and at the same time, he acted as a guide for botanical and geological field trips. After four years, Kingsley left Chester and took the job of Canon of Westminster.
The following year he visited America where his son, Maurice, was working and, after lecturing in the US, he went to Canada and then to the West Coast of America. On the trip, Kingsley fell ill and went home to Eversley, where he died a short while later.
ASSESSMENT: Kingsley was a notable member of the Christian Socialist movement and his writings were widely read during his lifetime.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Friend of TH Huxley*.
Influenced by Coleridge*
ONELINER: Charles Kingsley, author and Christian Socialist
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Colloms, Brenda, Charles Kingsley, The Lion of Eversley, Constable, London, 1975.
Uffelman, Larry K, Charles Kingsley, Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1979.