Kingsley, Henry  ( born Jan. 2, 1830 , Barnack, Northamptonshire, Eng.—died May 24, 1876 , Cuckfield, Sussex )  English novelist whose books were popular for half a century and who and brother of Charles Kingsley. Henry is best known for Ravenshoe (1861) and The Hillyars and the Burtons (1865), in which the hero fights in the Crimean War.

After leaving Oxford University, he set out for the Australian goldfields but was unsuccessful and returned to England after five years to write the novel The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn (1859), a novel of Australian lifeset in Australia. He edited the Edinburgh Review for a time and was its war correspondent during the covered the Franco-German War of 1870–71 as a war correspondent. His numerous novels are lively, but his later works became increasingly chattery and shapeless.

S.M. Ellis, Henry Kingsley, 1830–1876: Towards a Vindication (1931, reprinted 1979); William H. Scheuerle, The Neglected Brother: A Study of Henry Kingsley (1971).