Description
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
