The Poetry of Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley was born on June 12th 1819 in Holne Devon, a region of the Country for which he is now most associated. He spent his early years in Devon and Northamptonshire before studying at King's College, London and Cambridge graduating from Magdalene College in 1843. Wishing to pursue a career in the Church he was appointed Rector of Eversley in Hampshire in 1844. In 1855 he published one of his two enduring novels; Westward Ho! By 1859 he was chaplain to no less than Queen Victoria. By 1860 a Regius Professor at Cambridge and the following year he was the private tutor to the Prince Of Wales. In 1853 The Water Babies was published and remains to this day a classic around the world. Kingsley sat on the 1866 Edward Eyre Defence Committee along with Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens and Alfred Lord Tennyson, where he supported Jamaican Governor Edward Eyre's brutal suppression of the Morant Bay Rebellion against the Jamaica Committee. In 1869 Kingsley resigned his Cambridge professorship and, from 1870 to 1873, was a canon of Chester Cathedral. In 1872 he accepted the Presidency of the Birmingham and Midland Institute and became its 19th President. In 1873 he was made the canon of Westminster Abbey. Charles Kingsley died in 1875 and was buried in St Mary's Churchyard in Eversley. In this volume we publish his poetry which although partly neglected in the light of his above achievements is not to be dismissed. Many authors find a release in their poetry and for Kingsley amongst his novels and sermons are these undoubted gems.