Mary Kingsley

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Standard Name: Kingsley, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Henrietta Kingsley
MK 's two lengthy travel books about West Africa feature personal experience (including sharply amusing anecdotes) and comment on African culture, politics, and biology. As well as books, she penned essays for periodicals and letters to newspapers on the same themes, and a memoir of her father. Though viewed by some as a New Woman figure because of her independence as a late Victorian traveller and a thinker, she was opposed to the contemporary women's movement, and her critique of the crown colony system was aimed at improving rather than dismantling it.
Black and white photograph of Mary Kingsley in profile, seated in a wooden chair. She is wearing a black pillbox hat that ties under her chin, and a dark dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Travel Lucy Toulmin Smith
In 1888 LTS visited Paris in the company of her friend the explorer Mary Kingsley .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Mary Henrietta Kingsley
Textual Production Lucy Toulmin Smith
In 1886, soon after the publication of the York Plays, LTS edited at the request of Lady Caroline KerrisonA Common-place Book of the Fifteenth Century, a short, anonymous collection of poetry, prose...
Textual Production Sir James George Frazer
He enquired about Manners, Customs, Religion, Superstition, etc of Uncivilised or Semi-Civilised Peoples.
Warner, Marina. “Into Thin Air”. London Review of Books, pp. 14-16.
16
Among those who replied was Mary Kingsley .
Warner, Marina. “Into Thin Air”. London Review of Books, pp. 14-16.
16
Textual Production Amabel Williams-Ellis
She followed this with many more instructional works for children, which address such topics as human biology (in How You Began, 1928, and How You Are Made1932) and the relation of food to...
Textual Production Elspeth Huxley
EH thought a perfect precept for biography was voiced by Shakespeare 's Othello: nothing extenuate, nor set down ought in malice.
Nicholls, C. S. Elspeth Huxley. HarperCollins.
427
After publishing a life (that of Hugh, third Baron Delamere ) as her...
Occupation Louisa Anne Meredith
In 1891 LAM took her fish paintings to Albert Charles Günther , the British Museum ichthyologist. He admired them, but to her annoyance proclaimed them unsound scientific records because, although beautiful and correct, for scientific...
Literary responses Flora Shaw
FS 's contemporary and fellow African traveller Mary Kingsley maintained a fear of her and a strong distaste for her political views. In comments that she based on Shaw's publications and on the talk of...
Literary responses Mary Seacole
Scholars of colonial discourse such as Simon Gikandi have found in her newly available narrative an avenue for exploring the complexity of the colonial subject's construction of identity, against whom to read better-known Victorian women...
Intertextuality and Influence Isabella Bird
She several times mentions the earlier traveller Mary Kingsley , from whom she had advice and a letter of introduction.
Bird, Isabella, and Pat Barr. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. Virago.
180
Her own exploits were reported in local papers, so that her reputation preceded her.
Bird, Isabella, and Pat Barr. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. Virago.
279
Intertextuality and Influence Dervla Murphy
This time the background books taken on the journey included Mungo Park 's Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, 1799, and Mary Kingsley 's Travels in West Africa, 1897. DM renders eloquently...
Health Flora Shaw
The biographer of FS 's rival Mary Kingsley , however, alleges that Shaw's unstable health at this time was caused by a rejection she received from her long-time object of affection, Sir George Goldie.
Health Ethel Wilson
Reading still offered EW considerable solace and she praised the travel writing of Mary Kingsley and Simon Fraser . However, her daily routine came to consist of exercises in physical therapy to continue to rehabilitate...
Friends, Associates Lucy Toulmin Smith
Smith was Kingsley 's mentor in scholarly matters.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Friends, Associates Annie S. Swan
She also mentions a great many literary names. Among women writers whom she calls the stars of her generation were Mary Augusta Ward , Lucas Malet , Lucy Clifford , Sarah Grand , Violet Hunt
Friends, Associates Amabel Williams-Ellis
During Amabel's childhood, visitors to the St Loe Strachey household included the powerful and famous, mostly diplomats, millionaires, politicians.
Williams-Ellis, Amabel. All Stracheys Are Cousins. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
6
She met diplomat Lord Cromer , newspaper proprietor Lord Northcliffe (then Alfred Harmsworth), industrialist Arthur Balfour

Timeline

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Texts

Kingsley, Mary. A Hippo Banquet. Penguin, 2015.
Gunther, Albert Karl Lewis Gotthilf et al. “Appendix III: Report on a Collection of Reptiles and Fishes made by Miss M. H. Kingsley during her travels on the Ogowé River and in Old Calabar”. Travels in West Africa, 3rdrd ed, Frank Cass, 1965, pp. 692-17.
Kingsley, Mary, and George Henry Kingsley. “Memoir”. Notes on Sport and Travel, Macmillan, 1900, pp. 1-206.
Kingsley, Mary. “The Development of Dodos”. National Review, Vol.
27
, pp. 66-79.
Kingsley, Mary. Travels in West Africa. Macmillan, 1897.
Kingsley, Mary, and John E. Flint. Travels in West Africa. Frank Cass, 1965.
Kingsley, Mary. “Travels in West Africa, 1897”. University of Adelaide Library: Electronic Texts Collection.
Kingsley, Mary. West African Studies. Macmillan, 1899.
Kingsley, Mary. West African Studies. Macmillan, 1901.
Kingsley, Mary. West African Studies. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.