A book report on A Voyager Out

Katherine Frank’s novel A Voyager Out tells the life story of Mary Kingsley. She talks of her childhood, her young adult life, and her traveling life. She wanted to tell the world what this woman explorer did for Africa. Mary Kingsley had a famous family, many of whom were writers. Mary herself wrote two books. In her books however, she leaves out a lot about her life. A lot of what Katherine Frank had discovered came from Mary’s letters to friends while traveling. Some people who were the recipients of her letters found it odd that she put so much into her correspondences. In one case, she wrote a ten-page letter to a friend. His response to her was that she was wasting many of her good stories that could be published on a letter. Her response was to write him a six-page letter. She loved writing. She also loved her voyages to Africa.

Part of Mary Kingsley’s reason for loving her travel abroad came from her childhood life. Mary was born the daughter of a high-class man and his cook. George Kingsley was a writer and came from a family of writers. He did not produce much however. He left a lot of his work

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Many of the people aboard had stories of many white people who died making similar trips. It was a little bit difficult for me to pick out the important details to share with the class in this report. Yes, I realize that Mary led an extremely wonderful life, and therefore all of the details of her life should be considered important. She always took care of others, never worrying about herself. Even though she had the extra money, she decided not to travel any more luxuriously than she had the first time. She wrote a lot about death in her books. She felt that the Africans related better to her as a trader than they would have if she had come in empty handed. While her father was off on one of his many voyages, Mary Bailey had the front windows of the house bricked closed.

Mary’s mode of transportation for this first voyage was the ship The Lagos. Only a short time into her trip, her mother became ill and Mary had to return to take care of her mother. The research that the author of The Voyager Out based her writings on was Mary’s own writings. I am not saying that I want to go to the extremes that Mary did, but I think that I could definitely learn a lot about helping others by following her lead.

While in Christianborg Mary discovered just how bad the white man’s death toll was. She was bored in England and missed Africa. However, some of them were rather boring.

Common topics in this essay:
Mary Charley, Mary Kingsley, Mary Bailey, Africa Africa, Christianborg Mary, Charles Charley, Mary Mary, African African, Africans British, Mary England, mary kingsley, mary wrote, mary bailey, mother mary, mary wrote books, wrote books, reading book, taking care, helped sick, africa helped, people died, africa helped sick, people died left, died left africa, left africa africa,

Approximate Word count = 3761
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)

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