Until 1893, Mary Kingsley lived the typical life of a single Victorian woman, tending to sick relatives and keeping house for her brother. But after the death of her parents, she undertook an extraordinary decision: with no prior knowledge of the region, she set out alone to West Africa. Her subsequent book, Travels in West Africa, is a gripping travel narrative by a woman whose sense of adventure and fascination with Africa transformed her whole life. It challenged, and in some ways reinforced, contemporary Victorian prejudices about Africa, and also made valuable contributions to the fields of botany and anthropology.
