British Community and Family History
Born in London’s Harley Street on 28 February 1814 and spending many of his formative years in Porto, William Henry Giles Kingston was a writer mainly known in his days for his books for boys about seafaring. Although he is little known today, in 1884 an “opinion poll” of two thousand children voted Kingston as their second favourite author, after Dickens. A man of seemingly inexhaustible energy, his writings occupy over nine pages of the British Museum Catalogue. For a time, he edited the Colonial Magazine and, later, briefly published Kingston’s Magazine for Boys. In Portugal, Kingston wrote Lusitanian Sketches, a description of his travels around the north of the country, published in 1845, as well as a novel, The Prime Minister, based on the life of the Marquess of Pombal. Returning to England, he played a significant role in upgrading conditions faced by emigrants from the United Kingdom to Australia and elsewhere, and played a major role in the founding of the Society for Missions to Seamen.
The article can be read here
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER