William Henry Giles Kingston
BiographyWilliam H. G. Kingston (February 28, 1814–August 5, 1880) was an English writer of mostly boys’ adventure novels. Born in London, he was the eldest son of Lucy Henry Kingston (d.1852) and his wife Frances Sophia Rooke (b.1789), daughter of Sir Giles Rooke, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Kingston’s paternal grandfather John Kingston (1736–1820) was a Member of Parliament who staunchly supported the Abolition of the Slave Trade, despite having a plantation in South America. His father Lucy entered into the wine business in Oporto, Portugal, and Kingston lived there for many years, making frequent voyages to England and thereby developing a lifelong affection for the sea.
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards entered his father’s wine business, but soon indulged in his natural bent for writing. His newspaper articles on Portugal were translated into Portuguese and assisted the conclusion of the commercial treaty with Portugal in 1842, when he received from Donna Maria da Gloria an order of Portuguese knighthood and a pension. His first book was The Circassian Chief, published in 1844. While still living in Oporto, he wrote The Prime Minister, a historical novel based loosely on the life of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal. Settling in England in the 1840s, from 1850 his chief occupation was writing books for boys or editing boys’ annuals and weekly periodicals.
In 1853 he married Agnes Kinloch, daughter of Captain Charles Kinloch of the 52nd Light Infantry who had served in the Peninsular War as aide-de-camp to General Sir John Hope. Their honeymoon was spent in Canada, where Kingston acquired the background for many of his later novels. Agnes Kinloch was privately educated, as was the custom of the time. She sang well, was an accomplished musician, studied art and languages in Europe, and spoke both French and German fluently, a skill which was to be of benefit during her husband’s later financial troubles, when she became the actual translator for many of the works of Jules Verne, for which her husband received the credit. Kingston died at his family home in Middlesex. His death was registered four days afterward by H. C. Kingston, “present at the death,” the cause of death cited on the death certificate being “Cancer of Kidney.”
Bibliography (wildly incomplete)
The Circassian Chief (1844)
The Prime Minister (1845)
The Albatross; or, Voices from the Ocean (1849)
The Ocean Queen and the Spirit of the Storm: A New Fairy Tale of the Southern Seas (1851)
Peter the Whaler: His Early Life and Adventures in the Arctic Regions (1851)
Mark Seaworth: A Tale of the Indian Ocean (1852)
From Powder Monkey to Admiral: A Story of Naval Adventure (1883)
Villegagnon: A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution (1886)
Other links
Wikipedia