Henry Kingsley (1830-1876), the younger brother of famed novelist Charles Kingsley, showed signs of brilliance in his early works, but the majority of the twenty novels he published were either panned or simply ignored. The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn (1859) received considerable attention in Australia, and critics concur that his best work is Ravenshoe (1862). Following a brief period of marginal fame in the early 1860s, the remainder of Kingsley's life was marked by literary failure and poverty.

Fun and Folly

Henry Kingsley was born on January 2, 1830, at Barnack in the Northamptonshire countryside of England. The youngest child, he was the fifth son born to Reverend Charles and Mary (Lucas) Kingsley. Two of his brothers achieved significant fame during their life times, Charles as a novelist and George as a traveler and scientist. Soon after Kingsley's birth, before his first birthday, the family moved to Clovelly, Devonshire. When Kingsley was...