Henry Kingsley

Henry Kingsley, dying at 46, the younger brother of Charles Kingsley, himself a novelist deserving to be held in lasting remembrance, was born in 1830 at Barnack, Northamptonshire, where his father was vicar.

He went at 23 to Australia, where for five years he had an adventurous life, which included experiences in the mounted police.

 

Returning home, he used his knowledge in the form of fiction in his stories, his books numbering a score. He also had journalistic experience, which included war correspondence in the France-German war of 1870.

After Sedan, where Napoleon the Third and his army were captured, Kingsley was the first Englishman to enter the town. His writing was desultory and go-as-you-please, but was intensely vivid at its best, and his books are permeated by a fine spirit of chivalrous romance.

Ravenshoe, his masterpiece, gives pictures of the Crimean campaign. No novelist has sketched more truly the best type of the English gentleman.

 

 

 

 

 

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