The English author and clergyman Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) became the ideal of "Muscular Christianity" through his books and active, many-faceted life.

The son of a country parson, Charles Kingsley was born on June 12, 1819. After attending several schools he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1838. He was more sportsman than scholar. Shortly after graduation in 1842, he was ordained an Anglican priest. In 1842 he became rector of Eversley, the parish he served until his death in 1875. In 1844 he married.

Kingsley was a tall, thin, excitable man with a stammer. His enthusiasms pulled him in many directions, just as they drew famous people, including royalty, to him. In 1848, with Frederick Denison Maurice and J. M. Ludlow, he founded Christian Socialism. To support the movement he wrote many articles over the signature "Parson Lot" and two novels, Alton Locke (1850), about the plight of the urban worker, and Yeast (1851), about the ills of the...