Finding Dr. Livingstone: A History in Documents from the Henry Morton Stanley Archives

by Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi (Editor), James L. Newman (Editor)

This eye-opening perspective on Stanley’s expedition reveals new details about the Victorian explorer and his African crew on the brink of the colonial Scramble for Africa. In 1871, Welsh American journalist Henry M. Stanley traveled to Zanzibar in search of the “missing” Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone. A year later, Stanley emerged to announce that he had “found” and met with Livingstone on Lake Tanganyika. His alleged utterance there, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” was one of the most famous phrases of the nineteenth century, and Stanley’s book, How I Found Livingstone , became an international bestseller. In this fascinating volume Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi and James L. Newman transcribe and annotate the entirety of Stanley’s documentation, making available for the first time in print a broader narrative of Stanley’s journey that includes never-before-seen primary source documents—worker contracts, vernacular plant names, maps, ruminations on life, lines of poetry, bills of lading—all scribbled in his field notebooks. Finding Dr. Livingstone is a crucial resource for those interested in exploration and colonization in the Victorian era, the scientific knowledge of the time, and the peoples and conditions of Tanzania prior to its colonization by Germany.

Genres: History

560 pages, Hardcover

First published December 22, 2020

Reviews

[J. Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The infinite details and scholarly documentation make this a must-read for any student of history who is serious about learning the truth about Stanley and Livingstone and their meeting in Africa. More to the point, this book is where the student will find journal details and admissions from Stanley that are missing from the common lore. (Spoiler alert: If history bores you, this book will not cure it and may, instead, induce coma.)