Hippos Hairpins and High Button Boots - Audio Book on CD

An account of a Victorian Lady's journeys up the rivers of West Africa in the 1890s ...

Mary Kingsley was born in 1862. She was trapped by the conventions of her time until her parents died but then, with an income of £500, she was free to travel and in 1893 went to Africa

Travelling alone in small steamers and native canoes, which she learned to handle, she went deep into the jungles, learning about the spiritual lives of the African tribes and collecting specimens of fish for the British Museum

Her books were popular, funny and contentious and her views on missionaries were trenchant

After publishing her first book, Mary Kingsley returned to West Africa

During the Boer War she worked in the military hospitals in South Africa where she died of typhus

Click and listen to a Sample ...