Travel, Gender, and Imperialism: Mary Kingsley and West Africa (Mappings: Society/Theory/Space)

Studies of women travel writers have ranged from anecdotal and celebratory accounts to more critical essays on imperialism or the textualization of difference. This book does more. Drawing from the life and travels of Mary Kingsley, a nineteenth century travel writer and critic of the Crown Colony system, Alison Blunt cogently examines the relationships among travel, gender, and imperialism. Instead of studying either travel generally or women travel writers in the colonial period specifically, Blunt examines both to show how the spatiality and gendering of travel are inseparable. Underlying her examination are debates about women as a focus of historical research, Western women and imperialism, and the place of women in a historiography of geography.