Olwen Ward Campbell

I found this biography in one of my beloved secondhand stores, a 1957 effort: Mary Kingsley: A Victorian in the Jungle by Olwen Campbell. In brief, Kingsley until the age of 30 took care of various eccentric and ungrateful members of her family. When all but one brother had died and she inherited some money of her own, she took off for East Africa where she proceeded to get around with remarkable ease and aplomb, all while clad in heavy Victorian garb. Her own total alienation from her own culture led her to be sympathetic to an unusual degree to the treatment and plight of the newly 'colonized' Africans. In the eight years before she died of fever, she managed to exert an enormous influence over the British, ameliorating and shifting policy (not enough, but some) toward regarding native people with less arrogance and more effort to understand who they were. A solid effort from Campbell -- it was a time when one still didn't pry too deeply so she doesn't, but the book illuminates Kingsley more than adequately and would be a great companion read to her huge and dense volumes on her travels and observations. ****… (mer)