Like other eminent Victorians, Charles Kingsley wrote in various genres, and his influence—specifically in the reforms in the fields of theology, history, and literature as well as in the cultivation and regulation of an educated citizenry—was far-reaching. The bulk of his writing was published between the First and Second Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867 and thus coincided with efforts to extend the privileges of citizenship across class and gender lines and to justify such extension culturally and politically. He collaborated with scientific researchers and legislators to reveal that diseases such as cholera were not the will of God but the results of unsanitary conditions. In his "First Sermon on the Cholera" he exposed links between cholera epidemics caused by "undrained stifling hovels, unfit for hogs," and economic interests: "To confess their sins in a general way cost them [the English people] a few words; to confess and...