Traveller who disregarding the convention of her time journeyed through western and equatorial Africa and became the first European to enter parts of Gabon.
A niece of the clergyman and author Charles Kingsley she led a secluded life until she was about 30 when she decided to go to West Africa to study African religion and law with a view to completing a book left unfinished by her deceased father George Kingsley.
During 1893 and 1894 she visited Cabinda, the coastal enclave of Angola lying today between Zaire and the Congo republic, Old Calabar in southeast Nigeria and the island of Fernando Po, now part of Equatorial Guinea, near the Cameron coast.
Around the lower Congo River she collected specimens of beetles and freshwater fish for the British Museum.
Returning to Africa in December 1894 she visited the French Congo and in Gabon ascended the Ogoue River through the country of the Fang, a tribe with a reputation for cannibalism. On this journey she had many harrowing adventures and narrow escapes. She then visited Corisco Island off Gabon and also climbed Mt. Cameroon.
After returning to England with valuable natural history collections she lectured widely throughout the British Isles about her travels (1896-99). Her writings which express her strong sympathies for black Africans include Travels in West Africa (1897) and West Africa Studies (1899).
She died while nursing sick prisoners during the Boer War.
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