Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and Still Very Readable
Review: Although some of her comments about "the African Mind" and her belief in the unassailable superiority of Europeans is off-putting, she was otherwise a fine writer and this book is a considerable pleasure to read. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Still Very Readable
Review: Although some of her comments about "the African Mind" and her belief in the unassailable superiority of Europeans is off-putting, she was otherwise a fine writer and this book is a considerable pleasure to read. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: So much for Christmas shopping
Review: 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. This is a take-to-the-desert-island book, incredibly brave, cheerful, hilarious adventures of a proper Victorian lady wading alone through the swamps of west Africa, and if Everyman lets it go out of print, can Shakespeare be far behind? However, happy to know there's an unabridged version, though a bit pricey to hand out to casual acquaintances. Get a grip, Everyman.
Rating: 
Summary: not enough adventure
Review: I bought this book because it was supposed to be one of the 100 greatest adventure books of all time. While it does have narrow escapes and Mary Kingsley was very brave, there is too much discussion of "the African mind". I found the constant reference to the superiority of the European colonists very offputting. Of course it was written in the 1890's!
Rating:
Summary: A most remarkable woman
Review: 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:
Summary: A most remarkable woman
Review: 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:
Summary: A light in darkest Africa, circa 1893
Review: 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 is 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.
Rating:
Summary: Travels in West Africa
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: 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:
Summary: A classic
Review: 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.
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