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
Family and Intimate relationships Fanny Kingsley
There is no record of contact between FK and probably the most famous writer in the family after her husband: Mary (Henrietta) Kingsley , the scientist and African explorer, Charles Kingsley's niece, the daughter of...
Family and Intimate relationships Charlotte Chanter
A daughter, Louisa Mary, was born to the Kingsley family in 1824, but died as an infant, before Charlotte was born. The writers Lucas Malet and Mary Kingsley were both Charlotte's nieces.
Chitty, Susan. The Beast and The Monk: A Life of Charles Kingsley. Hodder and Stoughton, 1974.
26-8
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
114
Family and Intimate relationships Lucas Malet
The travel writer Mary Kingsley was a first cousin of her namesake LM , being the daughter of another uncle, George Henry Kingsley.
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, 1983.
6
She met diplomat Lord Cromer , newspaper proprietor Lord Northcliffe (then Alfred Harmsworth), industrialist Arthur Balfour
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 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 Evelyn Sharp
ES wrote later that at no time in her life did she make intimate friends easily. Most people she had to do with she liked up to a certain point only, but she could count...
Friends, Associates Rudyard Kipling
Despite RD's admiration for Cecil Rhodes , Alfred Milner , and Leander Starr Jameson , he also liked and respected the explorer Mary Kingsley , whose political views were nothing like this own.
Harper, Lila Marz. Solitary Travelers. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001.
180
In...
Friends, Associates Vernon Lee
Not long afterwards came the meeting with another important friend, the future traveller Mary Kingsley .
Frank, Katherine. A Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley. Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
42-3
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...
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...
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, 1982.
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, 1982.
279
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...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

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, 3rd 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. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
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. 2nd edition, expanded, Macmillan, 1901.
Kingsley, Mary. West African Studies. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.