Who was Mary Kingsley?
Just for Fun… Learn more about Mary Kingsley at the link under her picture on the right, then click and print our Mary Kingsley “Notable Women” crossword puzzle. Answer Key African adventure story page Use your imagination to write an African adventure! Include exciting events such as dangerous animals, daring escapes, and native encounters! Print out this African scene story page to write it on! Recommended reading Mary Kingsley’s book, Travels in West Africa, is still in print. Check your local library and see if it’s available. If not, it’s available for purchase online at Amazon.com.
Intrepid lady traveller, naturalist, nurse, pro-African political campaigner, witty author, dutiful sister and daughter; she was a complex and contradictory personality who achieved remarkable things. A missionary, Mary Slessor, whom Mary Kingsley had met and shared many experiences with on her second trip to Africa, summed up the essence of this ‘Victorian woman’ when asked to give an account of her. “You may as well tell me to catch the clouds with their ever varying forms, or catch the perfume of our forest jessamine; or the flashes of sunlight on the river. Miss Kingsley cannot be portrayed (she was) a series of surprises, each one tenderer and more surprising than the foregoing. No! There was only one Mary Kingsley”. After her death Alice Stopford-Green, her friend and long time correspondent, revived Mary’s idea of the African Society. An initial meeting was held in her parlour in Kensington on the 26th July 1900 with the aim of publicising the “laws and customs of the Africans”
