Western Women in Colonial Africa

Inspired by her own contact with Africa, Caroline Oliver has written biographies of five intrepid women who traveled through the interior of Africa during colonial times. Two were explorers. Alexine Tinne led her own expedition up the Bahr el Ghazal tributary of the Nile. The second sketch traces the expeditions of Florence Baker who accompanied her husband on two hazardous journeys to the lake regions of Central Africa. Oliver portrays Mary Kingsley, an intellectual who walked alone through the West African forests doing ethnographic research. The closing biographies are of two missionaries; Mary Slessor, who became the first female magistrate of the Okon district of Calabar, and Mother Kevin, who established many schools throughout East Africa. Oliver brings to her writing the special enthusiasm gained from having seen the African backgrounds in which these women lived and worked.