Book description
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.
One of the most witty and thoughtful of Victorian explorers, Mary
Kingsley (1862-1900) travelled in West Africa to study local customs and
the natural history of the region and greatly influenced European ideas
about Africa and African people. Kingsley wrote two books about her
experiences:
Travels in West Africa
(1897), which was an immediate bestseller, and West African Studies
(1899).
