Mary Kingsley: A Victorian in the Jungle

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 ...