She's the one I'd have loved to know personally. An original, self-taught, smart and funny.
You can buy her book in many bookstores; it's been re-issued in paperback by Everyman. However, it's also been made available as a free download from the Gutenberg Project because it's no longer copyrighted (at least, in the U.S.). Let me quote some things that will give you an idea how lovable she was:
Travels in West Africa (Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons)
by Mary H. Kingsley.
PREFACE
TO THE READER. - What this book wants is not a simple Preface but an apology, and a very brilliant and convincing one at that. Recognising this fully, and feeling quite incompetent to write such a masterpiece, I have asked several literary friends to write one for me, but they have kindly but firmly declined, stating that it is impossible satisfactorily to apologise for my liberties with Lindley Murray and the Queen’s English.
I am therefore left to make a feeble apology for this book myself, and all I can personally say is that it would have been much worse than it is had it not been for Dr. Henry Guillemard, who has not edited it, or of course the whole affair would have been better, but who has most kindly gone through the proof sheets, lassoing prepositions which were straying outside their sentence stockade, taking my eye off the water cask and fixing it on the scenery where I meant it to be, saying firmly in pencil on margins “No you don’t,” when I was committing some more than usually heinous literary crime, and so on...
INTRODUCTION.
Relateth the various causes which impelled the author to embark upon the voyage.
It was in 1893 that, for the first time in my life, I found myself in possession of five or six months which were not heavily forestalled, and feeling like a boy with a new half-crown, I lay about in my mind, as Mr. Bunyan would say, as to what to do with them. “Go and learn your tropics,” said Science. Where on earth am I to go? ...
My ignorance regarding West Africa was soon removed. And although the vast cavity in my mind that it occupied is not even yet half filled up, there is a great deal of very curious information in its place. I use the word curious advisedly, for I think many seemed to translate my request for practical hints and advice into an advertisement that “Rubbish may be shot here.” This same information is in a state of great confusion still, although I have made heroic efforts to codify it. I find, however, that it can almost all be got in under the following different headings, namely and to wit: -
The dangers of West Africa.
The disagreeables of West Africa.
The diseases of West Africa.
The things you must take to West Africa.
The things you find most handy in West Africa.
The worst possible things you can do in West Africa.
I inquired of all my friends as a beginning what they knew of West Africa. The majority knew nothing. A percentage said, “Oh, you can’t possibly go there; that’s where Sierra Leone is, the white mans grave, you know.” If these were pressed further, one occasionally found that they had had relations who had gone out there after having been “sad trials,” but, on consideration of their having left not only West Africa, but this world, were now forgiven and forgotten.
I next turned my attention to cross-examining the doctors. “Deadliest spot on earth,” they said cheerfully, and showed me maps of the geographical distribution of disease...
All my informants referred me to the missionaries. “There were,” they said, in an airy way, “lots of them down there, and had been for many years.” So to missionary literature I addressed myself with great ardour; alas! only to find that these good people wrote their reports not to tell you how the country they resided in was, but how it was getting on towards being what it ought to be, and how necessary it was that their readers should subscribe more freely, and not get any foolishness into their heads about obtaining an inadequate supply of souls for their money."
......
Well, here's the Gutenberg link: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/trwa10h.htm)
so you can read on for yourself, but there are very special sections further into the book than you might be willing to read, since the words on the screen are a bit hard to read, so I'll find them and post them here for you.
It's worth reading about the tiger she freed from a hand-made cage: after she opened the door it didn't move until she hissed, 'Run, you fool!' or how much she loved the Fan or Fang tribe of cannibals (with whom she felt it was much better to drink than to debate).
Or her amazing description in one very special passage of just exactly what she loved about being in Africa, an amazing piece from a woman who hated purple prose and wasn't used to showing her feelings. I'll go find that right now.
In the meantime, there's a nice little biography with some jolly quotations from her book, here:
http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa011002a.htm
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