Audiobook · read by volunteers
Travels in West Africa
Mary H. Kingsley (1862–1900)
Read by Nathalie J. · 29 chapters · 20 h 08
About the book
In the 1890s a young Englishwoman went alone to West Africa, travelled up the rivers, paddled through mangrove swamps and lived among people whose ways few Europeans had tried to understand. Mary Kingsley’s account is one of the great travel books, packed with observation, humour and a firm refusal to be intimidated by anyone or anything. From Liverpool to Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, and on to Fernando Po and the Bubis, and up the Ogowé, she records the plants, animals, customs and trade of the region, and argues with the colonial opinions of her day in a voice that is entirely her own. Twenty-nine parts, all read by one LibriVox volunteer, last more than twenty hours: a rich, unusual and often very funny journey that rewards patient listening.
Introduction
Mary Henrietta Kingsley, who lived from 13 October 1862 to 3 June 1900, was a British explorer and writer whose books changed how many Europeans thought about Africa. She criticised European colonial policy openly, took African law and custom seriously, and travelled in West Africa in the 1890s, largely on her own. Her father, George Kingsley, was the brother of the novelist Charles Kingsley, and she taught herself much of what she knew from his library.
Travels in West Africa, published in 1897 and recorded here in an edition dated 1900, is the account of those journeys. It belongs to travel and geography, and it combines narrative with natural history, ethnography and argument. Chapters follow the route from Liverpool to Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, to Fernando Po and the Bubis, and onward through the regions she visited. Kingsley writes with an appealing mixture of daring and humour, and she often turns the joke against herself.
The book must be read with some caution. It reflects the language and many of the assumptions of a late Victorian author, and some of her views on race and culture, though more sympathetic than those of many contemporaries, will strike modern readers as outdated. At the same time, her descriptions of landscape, travel and daily life are often vivid and have kept their value.
The recording has twenty-nine parts, beginning with the preface and introduction, and is read by one LibriVox volunteer over about twenty hours. Today it is worth hearing as a classic of travel writing and as the testimony of a remarkable woman who died young.
Public domain
Mary H. Kingsley died in 1900: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text