Rose Georgina Kingsley

Rose Georgina Kingsley was a British writer born in 1845 and remembered for books that ranged across travel, history, art, and gardening. She was the eldest daughter of the novelist and clergyman Charles Kingsley, and her surviving works show an author who was as interested in the wider world as she was in the past.

One of her best-known books, South by West: Or, Winter in the Rocky Mountains and Spring in Mexico (1874), drew on her travels in North America and helped establish her as an observant travel writer. She also wrote The Children of Westminster Abbey, a lively work of popular history, as well as A History of French Art and Roses and Rose Growing, which reveal the breadth of her interests.

Kingsley died in 1925. Although she is not as widely read now as some of her contemporaries, her books still appeal to readers who enjoy Victorian nonfiction with a personal, curious, wide-awake view of the world.