You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Victorian traveller Mary Kingsley has been portrayed as a victim of nineteenth-century attitudes towards women, a brave and daring explorer, an anti-imperialist agitator and even a feminist heroine. In this challenging and controversial new biography, Dea Birkett breaks through the shallow clichs which have defined this extraordinary female figure to frame a new image of the traveller as actively constructing her own history. For the first time, Mary Kingsley is seen as responding to and part of her time.
None
Kingsley set sail for Africa in 1893, embarking on a trip that would change not only her life, but the Victorian understanding of the "dark continent" as well.
Mary Henrietta Kingsley was an English ethnographic and scientific writer and explorer whose travels throughout West Africa and resulting work helped shape European perceptions of African cultures and British imperialism. After a preliminary visit to the Canary Islands, Kingsley decided to travel to the west coast of Africa. The only non-African women who regularly embarked on (often dangerous) journeys to Africa were usually the wives of missionaries, government officials, or explorers. Exploration and adventure were not seen as fitting roles for women in the Victorian era. Yet, when Mary Kingsley's invalid parents died within six weeks of each other, she followed in her explorer father's footsteps and traveled to Africa against her society's every convention. Here is her lively and witty account of that journey, an immediate bestseller when it first came out in 1897 and every bit as gripping today. Kingsley's complicated and indomitable character shines through in each sentence, as she describes hacking, marching, and climbing her way through the continent. After more than a century, she remains a feminist icon and a most remarkable woman.
The name of Mary Kingsley deserves to be more widely known than it is today. A woman of rare abilities and boundless courage, living in an age when the narrowest Victorian conventions about the duties of daughters in the home still prevailed, she nevertheless achieved fame and distinction as a traveller in the wildest regions of West Africa, a writer, an ethnologist, and an expert on Colonial Government. As a young woman, Mary Kingsley had no life beyond the strict confines of her home; not until 1892, when she was thirty, did freedom come to her. Instantly this astonishing young woman began the work, which was to lead her to remote, unexplored regions of ‘the Coast’. Along unmapped rive...
None
An exploration of the life and achievements of Mary Kingsley. As well as providing a full life story and analysis of her work, the author places her achievements in context by looking at the technological and historical context of the time. The title is part of a series examining the lives and achievements of important inventors and pioneers. Each volume includes: a biography illustrated with colour maps and photographs; a look at the ongoing impact of the subject's work; quotes and writings from newspapers and journals of the time; and information about rivals and the men and women who affected their life and work.
Map on lining papers. A biography of the Victorian explorergeographer, scientist, and author of travel books on West Africa.
Mary Kingsley's "Travels in West Africa" has become a classic, and deservedly so. Her story is remarkable. In the 1890s, unmarried and no longer having to care for her parents, Kingsley decides she should travel in "the tropics" and sets off for "West Africa" (i.e., the West coast of Central Africa). She travels as a scientist, collecting fish specimens, and finances her travels by trading along the way--but mostly she travels for the love of adventure and to satisfy an appetite for the unknown. "Travels in West Africa" is a treasure trove of information about Atlantic-coast Central Africa in the late 1800s. The last third of "Travels in West Africa" consists of three long chapters on fetish...