Henningsen, Charles Frederick
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1815-1877) UK-born soldier and author of Swedish parentage, active in the former capacity in Spain, Russia, Hungary, Nicaragua and Grenada, rising to the rank of brigadier-general in the army of one of these countries, though it has not been determined which; he had emigrated to the United States by 1851, where he helped wage military campaigns intended to extend the practice of Slavery throughout Central America, and eventually fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. His sf novel, Sixty Years Hence (1847 3vols), deals with a Biological crisis caused by a Mad Scientist who infects potatoes worldwide with a deadly disease; defeated in this project, he then creates an insect plague designed to destroy all food crops everywhere. The world is saved by a man named Tempest, whose discovery of secret knowledge and great powers while unjustly imprisoned are evocative of the exploits of Edmund Dantes in Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte-Cristo (1844-1845). [JC]
Captain Charles Frederick Henningsen
born England: 21 February 1815
died Washington, D C: 14 June 1877
works
- Sixty Years Hence (London: Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847) as "By the Author of 'The White Slave'" [published in three volumes: hb/nonpictorial]
links
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