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About the Author
Mary Henrietta Kingsley (1862-1900) Born in Islington, London, Kingley led a sheltered and quiet life where she was schooled at home by her father, George Henry Kingsley. George Kingsley was a doctor who was very interested in traveling and a published author of travel notes and memoirs. Mary's life changed drastically when her parents both died in 1892. Mary was left searching for a purpose to her life, and decided to pursue her interests in exploration and traveling. She said she wanted to find "something to do that her father had cared for." She planned a trip to West Africa to continue her father's studies on African religion, culture and law.From 1893 to 1894 Mary explored places like Kabinda, Old Calabar, and the Lower Congo, and subsequently wrote a book about her journey: Travels in West Africa. Lynnette Turner is Senior Lecturer in English at Oxford Brookes University, England. Her work on gender and ethnography, Mary Kingsley and on nineteenth and twentieth-century anthropological discourse has appeared in a number of collections, including Tim Youngs, ed., Crosscurrents: Writing and Race (Harlow: Longman, 1997), Alison Donnell and Pauline Polkey, eds., Representing Lives: Women and Auto/biography (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000) and Roger Luckhurst and Josephine McDonagh, eds., Encounters: Transactions in Science and Culture in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002).
--This text refers to an alternate
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
Kingsley's book is a treasure trove of information about Atlantic-coast Central Africa in the late 1800s. But beyond its historic and sociological value, the book is just wonderful. Her descriptions are vivid, her insights interesting, and her understated humor is a joy. Anyone with a love of exploration and a good story would enjoy this book. Unabridged versions are highly recommended.
Readers with a particular interest in Gabon should also see the works of Robert Nassau, an American missionary who was in Gabon when Kingsley traveled there. Evidently they met and discussed all things African at length, though Kingsley makes little mention of him. Nassau wrote "Fetichism in West Africa", "In an Elephant Corral" and "My Ogowe", but doesn't get the credit he deserves. Also of interest is "One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley" by Caroline Alexander. Alexander visited Gabon in the 1980s and compared what she saw then to what Kingsley had seen a century earlier.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In 1893 Mary Kingsley, a single Victorian woman, traveled alone to Africa. The sources of her interest in Africa are obscure. Possibly the tales her father brought back to England of his extensive travels lie at the root of her own interest. In any case her account of her travels in west and west-central Africa are a remarkable addition to our knowledge of the region during the early years of the colonial period. Kingsley wrote with a very outward focus. We hear little of her inner feelings, her comfort or lack thereof. Rather, she is consumed with a desire to know the land and its human and natural inhabitants.
We begin to taste the real flavor of Kingsley's experience in Chapter 2 in her account of the island of Fernando Po and its prominent people group, the Bubis. She then voyages down the coast, describing the lonely beauty of the great mangrove swamps that border the Bight of Benin.
Kingsley developed great respect, admiration, and even affection for the traders, black and white, whom she met in her journey. She traveled in their company and relied on them in what would otherwise have been impossible circumstances. Her views of other white colonials were less sanguine. She expressed mixed feelings about white missionaries, acknowledging the uplifting effects of their moral teaching while disdaining their confusion of cultural with spiritual messages.
One of Kingsley's central adventures was her trip from the Ogowe River to the Rembwe River. On this journey, she visited a series of villages each of which was reputed to be more dangerous and depraved than the one before. Her accounts of her lodging in these places are priceless. The difficulties of traveling through swamps and jungles, and across the great rivers of this region, were daunting. Kingsley's accounts of her determination to master the piloting of the native canoes are both funny and insightful. It took a lot for anyone to travel overland, and her perseverance marked her grit, her commitment to finish what she started.
The last third of the book consists of three long chapters on fetish customs. Although she lacks a systematic view of the role of fetishes and other spiritual tokens in the cultures she met, her depiction of their impact on everyday life and on funeral customs is enlightening. She delves into the afterlife beliefs of the peoples she encountered; in many of these cultures today, the beliefs she relates are still expressed in a form of syncretistic Christianity.
This edition of Kingsley's travel accounts is an abridgement of a much longer, multi-volume original that does not seem to be in print today. Since Kingsley herself prepared the abridgement, we can read it with confidence that it expresses both the details as she recorded them and the priority events or images that best characterize her travel experiences.
Gabon, Cameroon, and the areas around them continue today to rank among the wildest, best preserved areas of Africa, both naturally and anthropologically. Whether you visit these regions or not, there is no better introduction to them than these accounts by a Victorian original.
We begin to taste the real flavor of Kingsley's experience in Chapter 2 in her account of the island of Fernando Po and its prominent people group, the Bubis. She then voyages down the coast, describing the lonely beauty of the great mangrove swamps that border the Bight of Benin.
Kingsley developed great respect, admiration, and even affection for the traders, black and white, whom she met in her journey. She traveled in their company and relied on them in what would otherwise have been impossible circumstances. Her views of other white colonials were less sanguine. She expressed mixed feelings about white missionaries, acknowledging the uplifting effects of their moral teaching while disdaining their confusion of cultural with spiritual messages.
One of Kingsley's central adventures was her trip from the Ogowe River to the Rembwe River. On this journey, she visited a series of villages each of which was reputed to be more dangerous and depraved than the one before. Her accounts of her lodging in these places are priceless. The difficulties of traveling through swamps and jungles, and across the great rivers of this region, were daunting. Kingsley's accounts of her determination to master the piloting of the native canoes are both funny and insightful. It took a lot for anyone to travel overland, and her perseverance marked her grit, her commitment to finish what she started.
The last third of the book consists of three long chapters on fetish customs. Although she lacks a systematic view of the role of fetishes and other spiritual tokens in the cultures she met, her depiction of their impact on everyday life and on funeral customs is enlightening. She delves into the afterlife beliefs of the peoples she encountered; in many of these cultures today, the beliefs she relates are still expressed in a form of syncretistic Christianity.
This edition of Kingsley's travel accounts is an abridgement of a much longer, multi-volume original that does not seem to be in print today. Since Kingsley herself prepared the abridgement, we can read it with confidence that it expresses both the details as she recorded them and the priority events or images that best characterize her travel experiences.
Gabon, Cameroon, and the areas around them continue today to rank among the wildest, best preserved areas of Africa, both naturally and anthropologically. Whether you visit these regions or not, there is no better introduction to them than these accounts by a Victorian original.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Single and independent, with a small allowance after the death of her parents, Mary Kingsley decides to explore Africa. She sets off to the Congo, with no entourage nor special clothing and with no knowledge of the local lingo, knowing that this area was renowned for cannibals. Considering that Richard Burton set off to find the centre of Africa with an entourage of 600 bearers puts Ms.Kingsley's trip into perspective.
This is not just a wishful fantasy, she has an agenda to research the fetish cults of the natives and collect animal specimens, as well as fulfil the wanderlust that she had bottled up while looking after her parents.
She takes everything in her stride, beating off crocodiles - 'he was only a pushing young creature', wading through fetid swamps, falling into a staked animal trap and attributing her salvation to the benefits of a good thick woollen skirt!
She has a wonderful way with words; that dry, laconic humour that starts one into fits of giggling; the page-long description of 'Hubbards' sent out by well-meaning, misguided women in Europe for the use of the natives is absolutely wonderful.
She has excellent communication skills, getting what she wants from any native by offering him exactly what he wants - tobacco (reminding us of Xabicheh in 'Dead Man') - and if he doesn't want that, then he must need a hairpin to clean out his pipe!
I am awed by the determination, bravery, guts and chutzpah of this young woman; even more awed by her writing skills - which are definitely not in the Victorian mold, would that there were more of her books than the two she wrote (the other is 'West African Studies'), sadly this was not to be, as she died of typhoid in Capetown in 1900.
A book to savour - highly recommended! *****
This is not just a wishful fantasy, she has an agenda to research the fetish cults of the natives and collect animal specimens, as well as fulfil the wanderlust that she had bottled up while looking after her parents.
She takes everything in her stride, beating off crocodiles - 'he was only a pushing young creature', wading through fetid swamps, falling into a staked animal trap and attributing her salvation to the benefits of a good thick woollen skirt!
She has a wonderful way with words; that dry, laconic humour that starts one into fits of giggling; the page-long description of 'Hubbards' sent out by well-meaning, misguided women in Europe for the use of the natives is absolutely wonderful.
She has excellent communication skills, getting what she wants from any native by offering him exactly what he wants - tobacco (reminding us of Xabicheh in 'Dead Man') - and if he doesn't want that, then he must need a hairpin to clean out his pipe!
I am awed by the determination, bravery, guts and chutzpah of this young woman; even more awed by her writing skills - which are definitely not in the Victorian mold, would that there were more of her books than the two she wrote (the other is 'West African Studies'), sadly this was not to be, as she died of typhoid in Capetown in 1900.
A book to savour - highly recommended! *****
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A travel journal by a courageous, intelligent, vivacious and witty...
Travels In West Africa, Kingsley
Of all the great women travelers such as Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark of Middle Eastern fame and Fanny Bullock Workman and Janet Wuslin of... Read more
Of all the great women travelers such as Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark of Middle Eastern fame and Fanny Bullock Workman and Janet Wuslin of... Read more
Published on May 7, 2010 by Paul I. Dukel Jr.
engaging, detailed, and full of wit and spirit
Mary Kingsley was a rare and remarkable woman - self-sufficient, brave, droll, friendly and open, with self-deprecating humor and a keen eye. Read more
Published on July 22, 2008 by ShamayimBlue
not enough adventure
I bought this book because it was supposed to be one of the 100 greatest adventure books of all time. Read more
Published on September 24, 2001 by J. Waddell
Beautiful, funny, and rewarding to reread.
This is a wonderful book. Mary Kingley was a typical Victorian woman in many ways, but what makes this book great is the way her character was not typical. Read more
Published on April 12, 2001
So much for Christmas shopping
I am stunned that the Everyman edition is out of print, as I had planned to order a dozen or more as a permanent gift stash for everyone I ever expect to know. Read more
Published on November 26, 2000 by B. Schilling
Very well written tale of African travel
Mary Kingsley's "Travels in West Africa" has become a classic, and deservedly so. Her story is remarkable. Read more
Published on June 8, 2000 by Ed Gibbon www.congocookbook.com
A most remarkable woman
If you enjoyed Katherine Hepburn's spunky performance in "The African Queen" or delight when Elizabeth Peters' fictional Amelia Peabody prods a villain with her trusty... Read more
Published on January 1, 2000 by Kay A. Douglas
One Victorian woman's adventures exploring West Africa
Travels in West Africa is a witty, quirky, fascinating work. Mary Kingsley's wry sense of humor had me laughing out loud. Read more
Published on March 13, 1998
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