Mary Kingsley

Victorian traveller Mary Kingsley has been portrayed as a victim of nineteenth-century attitudes towards women, a brave and daring explorer, an anti-imperialist agitator and even a feminist heroine. In this challenging and controversial new biography, Dea Birkett breaks through the shallow clichs which have defined this extraordinary female figure to frame a new image of the traveller as actively constructing her own history. For the first time, Mary Kingsley is seen as responding to and part of her time.

Acknowledgements - List of Illustrations - Preface - Chronology - A World of Her Own - The Trail of Petticoats - A Situation More Suited to Mr Stanley - Liverpool's Hired Assassin - Ethnological Bush Worker - A Lone Fight - The Most Dangerous Person on the Other Side - Homeward Bound - Kingsleyism - List of Characters - Endnotes - Bibliography - Index