Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer,   ISBN:9780300142235

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A refreshingly sympathetic bio of Stanley. Jeal seems to have delved deeply into this facinating and accomplished explorer and the result is a quite informative and enjoyable book. Stanley was a product of his times and Jeal makes appropriate allowance for that in my view.

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"Stanley" by Tim Jeal is a detailed biography of the Anglo-American explorer of Central Africa, Henry Morton Stanley. I have been a little bit obsessed about Africa and Victorian-Era exploration for the last few years, so my reading of Jeal's book did not begin in a place of complete ignorance, although I wouldn't call my knowledge comprehensive or scholarly. What advantage my previous dabblings into the subject matter allowed me was a familiarity with the "myths" about Stanley that Jeal was aiming to debunk. On the plus side, Jeal treats the man Stanley as more than the sum of his public parts. However, the author comes across as a Stanley apologist, spinning the explorer's legacy to argue that Henry Morton Stanley was both the most successful geographer of Africa lore and a generally good guy that was misunderstood by his contemporaries as well as posterity. While it would be difficult to make a case against the former, Stanley has generally been (fairly or not) thought of as insensitive at best and brutal at worst for his harsh treatment of Africans on his expeditions and his role in founding the Congo Free State. In his retelling, Jeal takes Stanley's part at every turn, begging the question of the author's disinterested impartiality.

As Jeal explains in his introduction, the really new information about Stanley to which he had access was personal correspondence between Stanley and a couple of close friends, between Stanley and his wife, and a sheaf of letters to Stanley from a wide range of professional and personal associates. Private correspondence would be the best way to get at the real person since Stanley was prone to exaggeration and downright fiction in the published accounts of his endeavors. One might argue that all that was just to sell books. However, Stanley was a person who would say or do anything for approval, constantly crafting himself as someone that he thought he should be to cover up the truth of who he actually was. Stanley's words are difficult to trust, even when they are describing his own observations or thoughts.

Jeal's biography of Livingstone is known for its revision of the history of that explorer, arguing that the doctor and missionary was not the flawless saint that he had been remembered as. For "Stanley," Jeal is doing just the opposite: reclaiming the positive side of a high criticized and controversial figure. Perhaps I have just been sucked in by the previous propaganda, but he didn't convince me.

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This biography is based on Stnaley-related documents, including his personal letters, never before available to scholars. It has completely changed the impression I've had of Stanley over the years, particularly the very negative one I had of him from reading King Leopold's Ghost. It's also a great adventure story and well told! I give it my highest recommendation.

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Tim Jeal goes against the grain with this account of the incredible life of African explorer Henry Morton Stanley. For the last 140 years or so history has largely condemned Africa's greatest explorer for his cruelty and difficult personality. Jeal, apparently having access to documents previous biographers have not, makes a compelling argument which reveals Stanley as a softer, more egalitarian explorer than his counterparts, who unfortunately, through misguided exaggerations in his own published writings and other unfortunate events (stemming from the day he was born), lead to the widely held views that we have today.

This book, if closer to the truth than all those before it, turns the myth of Africa's greatest explorer on it's head.

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The problem with this book is that it's 475 pages long. If you're gonna read a 475-page book it better be about something you're awfully interested in, and I was only marginally interested in Stanley. The research I've done indicates that this is the definitive book about him, which is great and all, but I didn't really need a definitive book about him; a 300-page summary would've done fine.

In addition, I find Jeal's take on Stanley overly apologetic. I get it, he wasn't quite as bad as everyone makes him out to be, but that doesn't mean he was a totally righteous dude; Jeal goes too far sometimes.

He's a good writer though, easy to read, so at least it moved pretty quickly.

I wouldn't call this required reading unless you're a serious Stanley buff.