Kingsley, Mary Henrietta, 1862-1900

Mary Henrietta Kingsley was born on October 13, 1862, to George Henry and Mary Bailey Kingsley in Islington, England. Kingsley's father was a doctor, although he primarily devoted himself to traveling and writing. Despite a lack of any formal education except a few German lessons, Mary Kingsley clearly possessed a great thirst for knowledge, which was evidenced in her youth by her love of reading, particularly of scientific subjects. During her first thirty years, Kingsley lived the quiet life of an undistinguished Victorian woman, tending the house and caring for her bedridden mother.

Shortly after the death of both of her parents in 1892, however, Kingsley made a brief trip to the Canary Islands. During the next eight years, she returned many times and traveled extensively throughout West Africa, principally Cameroon and Gabon. During her explorations of the previously charted, yet dimly understood, hinterland of West Africa, Kingsley collected artifacts and zoological specimens. Her greatest interests, though, were in African culture and religion. Kingsley wrote several detailed books on her travels and on ethnology: Travels in West Africa (1897), West African Studies (1899), and The Story of West Africa (1900).

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