Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) was born in Holne, Devon, the son of a clergyman, and was himself ordained into the Church of England, eventually becoming a canon of Westminster Abbey and, for a decade, professor of modern history at Cambridge. A committed Christian Socialist who campaigned for sanitary reform and working-class education, he wrote the historical adventure Westward Ho! (1855) and the children's fantasy The Water-Babies (1863), a moral fable about a chimney-sweep's boy that also served as a vehicle for his enthusiasm for Darwin's new theory of evolution. His public feud with John Henry Newman over the honesty of Catholic clergy prompted Newman to write his famous defense, Apologia Pro Vita Sua. He died at Eversley, Hampshire, where he had long been rector, at fifty-five.