Travels in West Africa

Supported by a family inheritance that gave her £500 a year, Mary Henrietta Kingsley traveled to Africa to complete the book her father had started. The subject was the culture of Africa and Kingsley stayed with local people while she learned to survive in the African jungles, studied cannibal tribes, discovered new species of fish, and climbed Mount Cameroon by a route untouched by any European before her. Kingsley's ideas greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and the African people and her 1897 account, Travels in West Africa, quickly became a best-seller.