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 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. But beyond its historic and sociological value, the book is just wonderful. Mary Kingsley's 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 "Travels in West Africa." Mary Kingsley's account of her experiences, suffused with an infectious good humor, was published to immediate success in 1897 and remains a compelling tale of adventure.
Until 1893, Mary Kingsley led a secluded life in Victorian England. But at age 30, defying every convention of womanhood of the time, she left England for West Africa to collect botanical specimens for a book left unfinished by her father at his death. Traveling through western and equatorial Africa and becoming the first European to enter some parts of Gabon, Kingsley' s story--as an explorer and as a woman--would become an enduring tale of adventure, ranking 18th on "Adventure magazine' s list of the top 100 adventure books.
While engaged on this hunt I felt the earth quiver under my feet, and heard a soft big soughing sound, and looking round saw I had dropped in on a hippo banquet...' Told with verve and self-mocking wit, the adventures of doughty female Victorian explorer Mary Kingsley describe stumbling upon five hippos by night, dodging elephants and fighting off a leopard with a stool. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Mary Kingsley (1862-1900). Kingsley's work is available in Penguin Classics in Travels in West Africa.
A free-spirited young woman, eager for adventures away from her dreary 1870s New England home, sets sail for the Arctic on a whaling ship. The last thing she expects to find are the affections of the ship's rough-hewn skipper. Even after she allows herself to indulge in the passion she also feels for him, she is still unsure whether the seaman can be trusted. But when disaster strikes the ship, their love for one another may be the only thing that can save them.
Mary Kingsley went alone, in 1893, to remote areas in West Africa crawling with cannibal tribes. Some areas had never been visited by a white man, much less a white woman. She's at her best when writing in travel journal style. The rest of the book that is not travel narrative is her thoughts and research on Africa and its "fetishes", which is what seems to be her word for the religious and traditional customs of the natives.
Supported by a family inheritance that gave her £500 a year, Mary Henrietta Kingsley traveled to Africa to complete the book her father had started. The subject was the culture of Africa and Kingsley stayed with local people while she learned to survive in the African jungles, studied cannibal tribes, discovered new species of fish, and climbed Mount Cameroon by a route untouched by any European before her. Kingsley's ideas greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and the African people and her 1897 account, Travels in West Africa, quickly became a best-seller.
Contemptuous of Europe's 'civilising mission' in Africa, Mary Kingsley's (1862-1900) extraordinary journeys through tropical west Africa are a remarkable record, both of a world which has vanished and of a writer and explorer of immense bravery, wit and humanity. Paddling through mangrove swamps, fending off crocodiles, climbing Mount Cameroon, Kingsley is both admirable and funny. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.
Just in time for Mother's Day comes this collection of stories by three beloved Regency authors that celebrates the special joy of a mother's love for her children--and the charming romance of a mother in love.
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