Travels in West Africa

North Salem, NY: The Adventure Library, 1997 Hard cover, Octavo (5 ½" x 8 ⅜"). pp xxiii [3] 248 [6]. In half buckram with paper-covered boards featuring an African river, gilt titles to spine on dark green printed labels, and end papers featuring a map of West Africa. Condition: Fine. *** One of the few Western women to travel in Africa in the nineteenth century, Mary H. Kingsley (1862-1900) had, after her parents' death, "five or six months which were not heavily forestalled" and, being giddy "like a boy with a new half-crown" determined to spend her newly found freedom in exploration of the world. She decided on Africa in part because she had read of its perils - and no doubt, because it was a land that her explorer father, George Kingsley, had not sought out. She traveled by river, at times in a dugout canoe, and sought out cannibals (stayed with them overnight), got caught in a game trap, freed a captive leopard, and took several fish specimens back to the British Museum. *** Mary Kingsley shared a talent for writing with her uncle, the novelist and poet Charles Kingsley (he of "The Water-Babies" fame). She was also deeply sympathetic with everyone she met, and rejected the notion that Westerners should impose their own religion or values on African societies. Her final journey was to South Africa to serve as a nurse during the Boer War, where she treated prisoners of war, before succumbing to typhoid. *** The Adventure Library was a series of 30 books sold by subscription between 1994 and 2003. The series was the brainchild of Edward Livermore Burlingame, an American publishing executive, who put up his own money to kickstart the company. He had been looking for something new to accomplish, and thought that the classic works of exploration were being overlooked by the reading public, because there were no new editions. This is book 10 in the series.. First Edition Thus. Hard Cover. Fine.