author
Henry Kingsley
1830–1876
A lively Victorian novelist with a taste for adventure, he turned his time in the Australian goldfields into fiction full of energy, landscape, and rough-edged charm. He is best remembered for The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn and Ravenshoe.
3 Audiobooks
Ravenshoe
by Henry Kingsley
The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn
by Henry Kingsley
The Lost Child
by Henry Kingsley
About the author
Born in Barnack, Northamptonshire, on January 2, 1830, he was an English novelist and the younger brother of the better-known Charles Kingsley. He studied at King's College London and at Worcester College, Oxford, but left university before taking a degree.
In 1853 he went to Australia, spending several years around the goldfields and colonial life. That experience fed directly into his fiction, especially The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859), a novel often noted for its vivid Australian setting. Another of his best-known books, Ravenshoe (1861), helped secure his reputation with Victorian readers.
He published widely, though later critics have often felt his strongest work came early. Even so, his novels are still valued for their pace, humor, and feeling for adventure. He died in Cuckfield, Sussex, on May 24, 1876.