The author describes her experiences traveling in Gabon, and discusses the journeys of Mary Kingsley, a nineteenth century British explorer
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In 1893 Mary Kingsley, then 30, ventured into what is now Gabon, West Africa, "a region notorious for its deadly climate and diseases, its alarming wildlife, and its cannibals." The British wayfarer was enthralled and penned Travels in West Africa . This classic led American doctoral student and pentathlete Alexander to embark on a similar odyssey, retracing Kingsley's steps. Armed with Kingsley's book and maps, her own background research, and a store of determination, the author trekked through bamboo forests and villages of mud huts, encountering incurious natives and serene missionaries. Juxtaposing the colorful details of her days with the writings of a vast cast of explorers from a century before, Alexander weaves a verbal tapestry that tells of her deepening affection for the Gabonese and growing admiration for the exploits of her 19th-century forebear. In superimposing motorboats, hydrofoils and other modernisms upon Kingsley's less "civilized" adventure, Alexander may come up short in her desire to "make contact with the past," but the record of her attempt will fascinate.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Kingsley's Travels in West Africa (1897) still makes wonderfully entertaining reading; she is a hard act to follow. Although travel to Africa has shed its exoticism, it still offers plenty of challenges, and Alexander found her share in equatorial Gabon, retracing the route up the Ogooue River taken by Kingsley nearly 100 years ago. Weaving a narrative pattern of "then and now," Alexander evokes images of chugging river steamers packed with passengers, roads of red dust, pirogues paddled against the current, and more. As she travels in the footsteps of others, she reflects on the different faces of interpretive writing, selective recollection, and the disparity between fact and fiction. But ultimately this is Alexander's own story of discovery and can be read and enjoyed as such. She avoids the patronizing, exaggerated tone of much contemporary travel writing about Africa; she is sympathetic and gently self-effacing. Recommended for libraries developing travel literature collections and for Africana collections.
-Janet L. Stanley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Book Club Edition. Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dw, now mylar-sleeved. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered.; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 290 pages; Physical desc. : 290p. : 1 map ; 24cm. Subjects: Alexander, Caroline - Travel - Gabon. Kingsley, Mary Henrietta, 1862-1900. Africa - Gabon - Description and travel. Summary: Nearly 100 years ago Mary Henrietta Kingsley made a journey to Africa about which she wrote on her return in "Travels in West Africa". In this blend of historical sleuthing and travel writing, Caroline Alexander describes the effect on her of reading Kingsley's book and her decision to make her own journey in Kingsley's footsteps, following her path as closely as possible. Staying at Catholic missions, travelling by "pirogue" through waterways and rapids, she encounters the ghosts of Trader Horn, Albert Schweitzer and Dr Robert Nasau. But contact with the past gives way to adventures which might have amazed Miss Kingsley. 1 Kg. Seller Inventory # 182790
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large 8vo, map, bibliography, 290pp : the author's first book and an account of her travels in the footsteps of Mary Kingsley around GABON with time in Lambarene, lively, well-written; hardback vg like dw. Seller Inventory # 3022
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