Mary Kingsley
C. Howard introduces Mary Kingsley: the devoted daughter amd energetic middle-class housekeeper who had become a distinguished explorer by the age of thirty-five. More than any other publicist of the 1890’s, she helped to make Englishmen aware of their responsibilities on the African continent.
Mary Kingsley is one of the most singular figures amid the rich galaxy of distinguished Victorian women. From the age of fifteen until she was thirty she acted as companion and housekeeper to her delicate mother, living the narrow circumscribed life of an unmarried daughter. Yet by the time she was thirty-five she was a famous explorer, and an authority on West African problems whose trenchant and fearless criticism was heard with respect by ministers of the Crown. By thirty-eight she was dead of enteric fever, caught in South Africa while nursing Boer prisoners of war. Few women have done so much in so short a time.
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