Christian Manliness and National Identity: The Problematic Construction of a Racially Pure Nation

[Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet (1850) and Westward Ho! (1855)]  Charles Kingsley's best known books and the focus of [this] essay, participated in a process of national self-definition, through what might be called "cultural nationalism," for they embody a substantial re-imaging of race and cultural history, and their relationship to Christianity. But here Kingsley also reveals the problems surrounding the construction of a pure national-imperial identity based on racial and religious heritage, as he attempted to propagate the potent but unstable image of a masculine, charismatic, and authoritative Englishman who stands as a representative of a resolutely Anglo-Saxon and Protestant nation-empire. [Author]