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Title: Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley ISBN: 0-7922-6638-2 Publisher: National Geographic Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A classic
Comment: Mary Kingsley's "Travels in West Africa" has become a classic, and deservedly so. Her story is remarkable. In the 1890's, 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 1800's. 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 1980's and compared what she saw then to what Kingsley had seen a century earlier.
Rating: 5
Summary: A most remarkable woman
Comment: 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 umbrella, you will undoubtedly enjoy the real adventures of Mary Kingsley in Africa. At thirty years of age, her parent having both died, the sheltered Miss Kingsley set off for the continent that had for so long ruled her imagination. Setting herself up as a trader in West Africa, she set out across treacherous swamps and uncharted regions, going where few white men - let alone women - had ever been.
Kingsley wrote of her travels with a self-deprecating wit, impaling many of the racial and cultural prejudices of her day. She vastly preferred, for example, the uncoverted "cannibal Fans" to the tribes influenced by missionaries. She distrusted the motives of the "civilizing" European forces, with good reason.
My copy of this affordable Everyman edition, ably edited and introduced by Elspeth Huxley, is thick with favorite underlined passages. She writes of harrowing experiences as if she were recounting events at an ice cream social. Indeed, invariably dressed in proper Victorian garb throughout all her travels, she once escaped impalement in a game trap set with spikes - her voluminous skirts saved her. Of an eight-foot crocodile attempting to climb into her canoe, whom Kingsley dealt a repelling blow with a paddle, she remarked, "This was only a pushing young creature who had not learnt manners."
Travelling without the vast entourage that other explorers, such as Stanley, seemed to find necessary, she possessed an independence which bordered on eccentricity. She was, as Elspeth Huxley notes, at heart a lone wolf, always preferring to go her own way and make her own judgements about those she encountered. The character of this indomitable, fascinating woman shines through her account of her travels.
Rating: 5
Summary: Travels in West Africa
Comment: In 1893, defying every convention of Victorian womanhood, Mary Kingsley set off alone for West Africa to collect botanical specimens. 'Travels in West Africa' is a book as vivid and unforgettable as the extraordinary woman herself.
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. Originally published in 1895, and never out of print, Travels in West Africa is Kingsley's account of her dauntless travels, unaccompanied but for African guides, into Africa's most dangerous jungles, where the tribes were reputed to be ferocious and cannibalistic. Along the way, she fought off crocodiles with a paddle, hit a leopard over the head with a pot, fell into an animal trap lined with sharpened sticks, and waded through swamps in chin-deep water. Despite her travails, Kingsley succeeded remarkably in this unknown place, establishing warm relationships with the natives and collecting more than 400 samples of plants and insects, some of which are now extinct. Featuring an introduction that expertly sets Kingsley's adventure against the history of European exploration of Africa, Travels in West Africa is a unique and extraordinary contribution-by an equally unique and extraordinary woman-to the best of adventure writing.
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Title: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby, Evelyn Waugh ISBN: 0864426046 Publisher: Lonely Planet Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Natives of My Person by George Lamming ISBN: 0472064673 Publisher: UMP Pub. Date: 01 March, 1991 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress by James, Morris, Jan Morris ISBN: 0156400065 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: May, 1980 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: One Dry Season : In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley by Caroline Alexander ISBN: 0394574559 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 20 January, 1990 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: African Silences by Peter Matthiessen ISBN: 0679731024 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 30 June, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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