Mary Henrietta Kingsley (13 October 1862 – 3 June 1900) was an English ethnographer, scientific writer, and explorer whose travels throughout West Africa and resulting work helped shape European perceptions of both African cultures and British colonialism in Africa. Early life Kingsley was born in London on 13 October 1862, the daughter and oldest child of physician, traveller and writer George Kingsley and Mary Bailey. She came from a family of writers, as she was also the niece of novelists Charles Kingsley and Henry Kingsley. The family moved to Highgate less than a year after her birth, the same home where her brother Charles George R. ("Charley") Kingsley was born in 1866, and by 1881 were living in Southwood House, Bexley in Kent. Her father was a physician and worked for George Herbert, 13th Earl of Pembroke, and other aristocrats and was frequently away from home on his excursions. During these voyages he collected information for his studies. Dr. Kingsley accompanied Lord Dunraven on a trip to North America in 1870– 1875. During this trip, Dr. Kingsley was invited to accompany George Armstrong Custer's U.S. Army expedition against the Sioux Indians. The reported massacre of Custer's force terrified the Kingsley family, but they were relieved to learn that bad weather had kept Dr. Kingsley from joining Custer. It is possible that her father's views on the treatment faced by Native Americans during the helped shape Mary's later opinions on British colonialism in West Africa. In terms of Kingsley's education, she had little formal schooling compared to her brother, other than German lessons at a young age; because, at that time, and at her level of society, education was not thought to be necessary for a girl. She did, however, have access to her father's large library and loved to hear her father's stories of foreign countries. She did not enjoy novels that were deemed more appropriate for young ladies of the time, such as those by Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë, but preferred books on the sciences and memoirs of explorers. In 1886, her brother Charley entered Christ's College, Cambridge, to read law; this allowed Mary to make several academic connections and a few friends. With respect to religion, there is little indication that Kingsley was raised Christian; instead, she was a self-proclaimed believer with, "summed up in her own words [...] 'an utter faith in God'" and even identified