Mary Kingsley was born in London in 1862. Her father was a doctor but his real interests were books about travel and exploration. Mary's mother was an unhealthy woman and from an early age, Mary stayed at home to look after her. Mary never went to school and did not mix with children of her own age. She later wrote: '' the whole of my childhood and youth was spent at home, in the house and garden. I saw little of the outside world. People my own age did not like me because I knew nothing about the games they...
was happy to see that the leopard was gone.

Mary retuned to England the following year, but in 1895 she retuned to West Africa and traveled in Cameroon. After her return to England in 1896, she began to write a book about her experience in Angola. Her book, called Travels in West Africa, was published in 1897. The book made her famous and two years later she published a book about Cameroon, called West African studies. She retuned to Africa the following year but, soon after arriving in Cape Town, South Africa, she caught a deadly disease and died.