Book review of "A Voyager Out - the life of Mary Kingsley" by Katherine Frank

A Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley (Paperback) A remarkable Victorian woman, Mary Kingsley became her mother's nurse and caretaker from age four to 30. Virtually abandoned by her world traveler father, she taught herself to read his medical books and had an insatiable interest in travel, tribal structure and religions, as well as flora and fauna. But as a proper daughter of the age, she was bound to the wish and whim of her father, and brother when the father died about the same time as her mother. Only when the brother journeyed half-heartedly in his father's footsteps was Mary finally free to make her own imprint upon the Death Coasts (where 9 of 10 Europeans died)... she made three trips to the rivers, swamps and colonial 'factories', studied diseases, collected fish and insects, but it was among the secretive tribes that she made so many discoveries about religion, more and government structure. Between voyages (1893, 1895) she wrote best selling books, lectured in famous scientific settings and, somehow, edited her father's copious notes into yet another book. Finally she sailed to South Africa where she treated Boar soldiers, women and children in British concentration camps. There she contracted the very diseases she had survived in West Africa and in 1900, like thousands of others, died. Even in her 'full honors' burial at sea, she refused to follow accepted procedure and caused a legendary stir among her admirers. And yet she was no supporter of women's issues, spoke out against woman's suffrage, and worker conditions. Odd contradictions. The book is tedious at times, but richly researched and full of 'feel' for the Victorian Age. Well worth a reader's time.