Charles Kingsley was a clergyman, social reformer, novelist, poet, polemicist, university professor, and chaplain to the queen. He was prolific, publishing thirty-five works in addition to a volume of sermons that was published after his death. By 1850, when he was only thirty-one, he was an established author whom Alfred Tennyson visited and whom foreign visitors endeavored to see. His younger brother, Henry, was also a novelist, though he is now forgotten. Though Kingsley's works are not widely read today, his life and thought continue to be of interest.

In the history of fantasy, Kingsley is remembered primarily for his novel The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby (1863), a tale about a boy who dies and is transformed as a fantastic creature. Popular in its own time, the book is historically significant not only for its use of the fantastic but also for its Victorian blend of evolutionary...