Mary Kingsley: Imperial Adventuress

Victorian traveller Mary Kingsley has been portrayed as a victim of nineteenth-century attitudes towards women, a brave and daring explorer, an anti-imperialist agitator and even a feminist heroine. In this challenging and controversial new biography, Dea Birkett breaks through the shallow clichs which have defined this extraordinary female figure to frame a new image of the traveller as actively constructing her own history. For the first time, Mary Kingsley is seen as responding to and part of her time.