Writing the Journey: June 1999

"Abstract: Lady Jenkins, Big-Game Hunter: An Undiscovered Manuscript"

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Troy Bassett
Department of English
University of Kansas
email: tbassett@falcon.cc.ukans.edu

In this paper, I examine a newly discovered manuscript describing a 1904-05 safari to British Somaliland organized and attended by Lady Catherine Minna Jenkins and five others. Lady Jenkins was a noted sportswoman who hunted big game in Africa, India, and Tibet--she chronicled the latter trip in her book Sport and Travel in Both Tibets(1909). Though she mentions her African safari in passing, she herself wrote no record of it. However, Antonia Williams, her female companion on the safari, made a scrapbook entitled "Recollections of Somaliland" which was composed of typed copies of her letters and diary, her black and white photographs, and her watercolor paintings. The manuscript recounts the details of Lady Jenkins' hunting, the attitude of the men in the party and the author to her hunting, and the difficulties faced by this woman hunter. As a description of an atypical woman traveler, the manuscript provides insight into the boundaries of permissible feminine behavior: Williams recoils at Lady Jenkins' unfeminine attempts to hunt, while the men of the party condescend to help her hunting.

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Troy Bassett
Department of English
3116 Wescoe Hall
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045-2115
email: tbassett@falcon.cc.ukans.edu

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Updated May 23, 1999