[3] An opportune legacy from a relation enabled him to leave Oxford free of debt and emigrate to Australia.

Philip Russell stated in 1887 that he employed Kingsley at his station Langa-Willi, and that Geoffry Hamlyn (1859) was begun there.

Miss Rose Browne, daughter of "Rolf Boldrewood", stated it was on her father's suggestion that Kingsley began to write.

On his return to the UK in 1857,[5] Kingsley devoted himself to literature, and wrote several well-regarded novels, including Geoffry Hamlyn, set in Colebrooke, Devon, and Australia, which the late 19th-century English author George Gissing called "unliterary stuff",[6] The Hillyars and the Burtons (1865), Ravenshoe (1861) and Austin Elliot (1863).

[3] Kingsley also published Leighton Court (1866), Mademoiselle Mathilde (1868), Tales of Old Travel Re-narrated (1869), Stretton (1869), The Boy in Grey (1871), Hetty and other Stories (1871), Old Margaret (1871), Hornby Mills and other Stories (1872), Valentine (1872), The Harveys (1872), Oakshott Castle (1873), Reginald Hetherege (1874), Number Seventeen (1875), The Grange Garden (1876), Fireside Studies (Essays) (1876), and The Mystery of the Island (1877).