This Life of Charles Kingsley is a detailed intellectual biography, which is at the same time a critical and contextual study. All Kingsley’s literary and religious works are taken into account, especially as these are exceptionally closely related to his personal ideas and experiences. Working from the original manuscript letters, I have throughout placed the events of Kingsley’s life against a social-historical-religious background. Analyses of Kingsley’s relationships with important contemporaries such as James Anthony Froude, Frederick Denison Maurice, Thomas Hughes, George Henry Lewes, Philip Gosse, Thomas Huxley, John Colenso, Robert Chambers, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and many others are given ample space. Much attention has been paid to how Kingsley was affected by such main mid-nineteenth-century themes as geological discoveries, the Oxford Movement, biblical Higher Criticism, Chartism, sanitary reform, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, Darwinism, the American Civil War, and the anti-slavery campaigns. Extensive use has been made of previously unexplored material, such as Kingsley’s sermons, essays, Glaucus, The Hermits and At Last, as well as texts not included in the Complete Works, such as the serial Yeast, and his writings for Politics for the People and The Christian Socialist. New influences on Kingsley’s more famous works are explored, and special emphasis has been given to themes on which previous biographies have remained relatively silent, such as, for example, Darwinism and the Newman controversy. Kingsley’s famous encounter with Newman in 1863 is recast as the final outcome of a life-long discussion on celibacy on Kingsley’s part, explaining why Kingsley reacted in the way he did.

The Apostle of the Flesh: A Critical Life of Charles Kingsley

KLAVER, JAN MARTEN IVO
2006

Abstract

This Life of Charles Kingsley is a detailed intellectual biography, which is at the same time a critical and contextual study. All Kingsley’s literary and religious works are taken into account, especially as these are exceptionally closely related to his personal ideas and experiences. Working from the original manuscript letters, I have throughout placed the events of Kingsley’s life against a social-historical-religious background. Analyses of Kingsley’s relationships with important contemporaries such as James Anthony Froude, Frederick Denison Maurice, Thomas Hughes, George Henry Lewes, Philip Gosse, Thomas Huxley, John Colenso, Robert Chambers, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and many others are given ample space. Much attention has been paid to how Kingsley was affected by such main mid-nineteenth-century themes as geological discoveries, the Oxford Movement, biblical Higher Criticism, Chartism, sanitary reform, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, Darwinism, the American Civil War, and the anti-slavery campaigns. Extensive use has been made of previously unexplored material, such as Kingsley’s sermons, essays, Glaucus, The Hermits and At Last, as well as texts not included in the Complete Works, such as the serial Yeast, and his writings for Politics for the People and The Christian Socialist. New influences on Kingsley’s more famous works are explored, and special emphasis has been given to themes on which previous biographies have remained relatively silent, such as, for example, Darwinism and the Newman controversy. Kingsley’s famous encounter with Newman in 1863 is recast as the final outcome of a life-long discussion on celibacy on Kingsley’s part, explaining why Kingsley reacted in the way he did.
2006
9789004151284
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11576/1890965
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