Kingsley's interest in history is shown in several of his writings, including
The Heroes (1856), a children's book about
Greek mythology, and several historical novels, of which the best known are
Hypatia (1853),
Hereward the Wake (1865) and
Westward Ho! (1855). From his book
The Heroes the story of
Perseus, the Gorgon Slayer was taken and in 1898 republished as ''
The Story of Perseus and the Gorgon's Head''. He was sympathetic to the idea of
evolution and was one of the first to welcome
Charles Darwin's book
On the Origin of Species. He had been sent an advance review copy and in his response of 18 November 1859 (four days before the book went on sale) stated that he had "long since, from watching the crossing of domesticated animals and plants, learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species." Darwin added an edited version of Kingsley's closing remarks to the next edition of his book, stating, "A celebrated author and divine has written to me that 'he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.'" When a heated dispute lasting three years developed over
human evolution, Kingsley gently satirised the debate, known as the
Great Hippocampus Question. Kingsley's concern for social reform is illustrated in his classic,
The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863), a tale about a boy
chimney sweep, which retained its popularity well into the 20th century. The story mentions the main protagonists in the scientific debate over human origins, rearranging his earlier satire as the "great hippopotamus test". The book won a
Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1963. Kingsley's chief asset as a novelist lay in his descriptive faculties: the descriptions of South American scenery in
Westward Ho!, of the
Egyptian desert in
Hypatia, and of the
North Devon scenery in
Two Years Ago. American scenery is vividly and truthfully described, in part stemming from his observations during a lecture tour of the United States that he undertook in 1874 and reported to his wife,
Francis Eliza Grenfell Kingsley. The letters were later published. He also published his work
At Last, written after he had visited the tropics. His sympathy with children taught him how to gain their interest. His version of the old Greek stories entitled
The Heroes, and
Water-babies and
Madam How and Lady Why, in which he deals with popular natural history, take high rank among books for children. Kingsley also wrote poetry and political articles, as well as several volumes of sermons. Kingsley coined the term
pteridomania (meaning "a craze for ferns") in his 1855 book
Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore. ==Racial views==