William Henry Giles Kingston was arguably the most popular and respected English writer for boys in the second half of the nineteenth century. He was the foremost author of boys' books between 1850 and 1900, and he played a significant role in the popularity of the genre of boys' fiction in the Victorian period. Kingston wrote such classics of children's literature as Peter the Whaler: His Early Life and Adventure in the Arctic Regions (1851) and The Three Midshipmen (1873); he wrote From Powder Monkey to Admiral (1884), the first serial published in the Boy's Own Paper (1879); he founded (January 1880) and edited the boys' periodical Union Jack; and he edited the Colonial Magazine (1849-1852) and Kingston's Magazine (1859-1862). A Union Jack obituary (26 August 1880) described him as "the father of the school of writers of healthy stirring tales for boys." Kingston's more than 150 sea stories and other tales of adventure typically promote England's imperial...