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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 179 D ubbed the "Dark Continent" by Victorian explorers who were fascinated by its geographical mysteries and incredible abundance of game, Africa has been the setting for a massive outpouring of literature of interest to sportsmen. The latter half of the 19th century on into the pre-World War I portion of the early 20th century gave us grand writers such as Cornwallis Harris, Samuel Baker, Fred Selous, Theodore Roosevelt, John Millais, James Sutherland, J. H. Patterson, Cotton Oswell, C. J. Andersson, and a host of others. Yet the impressive wealth of books on hunting and derring-do they produced is dwarfed by the literature of the post- World War I era. Most of this literature is biographical or autobiographical in nature, or it examines some other subject of interest to hunters. There are even bibliographies on the subject, ranging from scholarly works such as treatments by this columnist dealing with Dr. David Livingstone, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, and Sir Harry H. Johnston to Ken Czech's invaluable An Annotated Bibliography of African Big Game Hunting Books, 1785 to 1950. Writers of considerable renown, such as Ernest Hemingway, Robert Ruark, Peter Capstick, and Wilbur Smith have titillated us with the romance of African sport in both fact and fiction. Anyone who reads outdoor magazines or delves very deeply into the literature of sport-hunting in Africa will recognize other authors such as Denis D. Lyell, Paul Belloni du Chaillu, "Pondoro" Taylor, "Karamojo" Bell, J. A. Hunter, H. A. Bryden, Sir Alfred Pease, Parker Gillmore, and Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming. One side of African literature that has been largely overlooked is the contribution women have made to the field. While space in no way permits me more than the barest of overviews, I do want to mention some female writers on Africa, from yesterday and today, who greatly merit the attention of anyone interested in fine armchair adventure. Books By Jim Casada WOMEN WRITERS ON AFRICAN TRAVEL, SPORT, AND ADVENTURE. A mong the earliest women to make a significant mark in Africa was Florence Baker, the mistress of Sir Samuel Baker. After buying Florence in a white slave market, Samuel proceeded to fall in love with and eventually marry her. She accompanied her famed hunter/ explorer husband on his African trips and figures prominently in his books, The Albert N'yanza and Ismailia. Intrepid to a fault, on more than one occasion Florence dealt with dangerous big game and even more dangerous natives when her husband was seriously ill. Her diaries from Africa were eventually turned into a most enjoyable book, Morning Star, edited by Anne Baker, the wife of distant relative of Sir Samuel. The travels of two pioneering women in Africa, May French Sheldon and Mary Kingsley, trace back to the closing years of the 19th century. Sheldon, known as Bebe Bwana ("Lady Boss") to the Masai in East Africa, came from an affluent and well- connected American family. Her parents were personal friends of famed explorer Mary Bradley, Carl Akeley and Herbert Bradley with a mountain gorilla taken in Ruanda-Urundi in 1921 for the American Museum of Natural History. From The diana Files by Fiona Clark Capstick.