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A Victorian Lady in Africa: The Story of Mary Kingsley

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In 1890, Mary Kingsley, niece of the famous writer, Charles Kingsley, was freed of her oppressive and restricted upbringing in an English Victorian family by the death of her parents. With an adequate inherited income, she went to find her heart's desire which was exploration in the unknown countries she had read about in books. Her first adventurous voyage was to West Africa which was to become her fascinating new World. She was determined to overcome hardships in the jungles, guiding canoes through the West African interior rivers, through the cannibal country and to exploit the trading customs with the natives to support her trips. The book recounts her own descriptions of her travels and encounters and are often hair-raising and fully enhance her uncanny facility for coping with whatever life brought her as an intrepid unbeatable woman. Readers will shake their heads and wonder: "How did she do all that...how did she keep going? It is sad that she died early; and I regretted that the author of these events did not have all of Mary Kingsley original notes and diaries which had been lost in passing down to her family apparently, after her death in 1900. This book is still fascinating and illuminating and is a true and absorbing account of a rare woman who always dressed in her long European skirts in the jungle because as she described "they are always so practical if you fall 10 feet into an animal pit trap - the sharp stakes can't penetrate the heavy fabric easily I have found in my experience."