The Best Biography of Stanley | Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

Tim Jeal's biography of Henry Morton Stanley is a masterpiece! | Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer | Tim Jeal

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	• Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer Tim Jeal Yale University Press, 2007 - 608 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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Abandoned Boy Becomes Africa's Greatest Discoverer

This is the finest biography that I have read in some time. The writing is superb and it is based upon the most thorough research on its subject yet. The author is uniquely qualified to write this book as he has also written the definitive book on Stanley's counterpart, Dr. Livingstone. What makes this book so compelling is the subject himself. He was abandoned by his mother and never knew his father. The kind grandfather who took care of him died suddenly when Stanley was five years old and his mother's family had him placed in a workhouse. There he stayed for ten years when he left at age fifteen. His life became an odyssey which took him to America back to England and then to Africa where he achieved fame. Despite his accomplishments as discoverer and author, his personal life was full of disappointment. His attempt to hide his illegitimacy had led him to lie about his background. This coverup came close to unraveling on numerous occasions. Years after his career had ended he returned to New Orleans incognito where he walked the cemeteries looking for a "Stanley" tombstone that would give him a name to use in documenting his story. The irony was that one of the world's greatest discoverers could never find himself. An excellent book about a fascinating subject.

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The Best Biography of Stanley

Years ago I stumbled on a book of fiction about Stanley's captaining of the ill-fated relief mission to "save" Emin Pasha in the late 1880's. I simply couldn't believe that what I was reading about the horrors of the journey were real, so began by reading my first Stanley biography. The horrors were real, and the courage required of African explorers was almost beyond imagination. Stanley, more than any man, knew that dark side.

From the beginning I've been riveted by the man's accomplishments and (like T.E. Lawrence, as another review has perceptively noted) his many attempts to 'create himself' for the media to cover up a sad, neglected, Dickensian childhood. The most recent biography of Stanley I read, by John Bierman, depressed me, because it leaned so hard on Stanley's toughness that he came out as a brutal bully with no redeeming features whatsoever. My initial admiration waned.

It is thus a delight to find in such a superb, well-written, and thoroughly researched biography as this, that Henry Stanley was a genuine human being, flawed and fascinating, gentle and brutal, demanding and obsessed by duty. Jule presents a multi-dimensional character and one's respect for other biographers, who've simply beaten Stanley for the sins of his generation, wanes in direct proportion to the realization of all that Stanley achieved in spite of his inner demons. That sad, abandoned child lived in Stanley until the day he died, but what remarkable courage he showed in spite of it! And what permanent changes he helped bring to world history, even if others took his great explorations and made horrible things of them.

Also, with all due respect to many of the earlier, brilliant African explorers such as Burton or Stanley Baker, how remarkably free of racism and paternalistic 'cant' Stanley was. Burton himself was almost a pathological racist. There is no trace of this in Stanley. Again and again, when he lost his temper, it was because his fellow whites invariably treated the natives with (at best) contempt and, at worst, with brutality. The irony that it has become fashionable to portray Stanley himself as a brutal racist, is simply one of many in this biography.

This should remain by far the best, most thorough, and most balanced biography of this remarkable man for the foreseeable future. Thank you, Mr. Jeal, for portraying the whole man again. And what a remarkable story it is, truly starker than any fiction!

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Tim Jeal's biography of Henry Morton Stanley is a masterpiece!

Allow me state here at the beginning of my review that categorically Tim Jeal's biography of Henry Morton Stanley is a masterpiece. The book is epic in scope and proves to be both a wonderful narration of a life as well as a statement in support of the rehabilitation of Stanley's reputation. The book stands along side of my favorite biographies such as PETER THE GREAT by Robert Massie, AMERICAN CAESAR by William Manchester, and PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER (T.E. Lawrence) by John E. Mack. Much of Stanley's story seems to mirror T/E. Lawrence. Both illegitimate and trying to find a place in the world when the British class system was an obstacle to achievement to those of lowly birth. Both in many ways reinvented themselves but never were able to overcome the circumstances of their birth and childhood secrets. But as amazing as is the story of Lawrence of Arabia Tim Jeals reveals Stanley to be as just as an incredible life. I am not going to go into the various expeditions and events of Stanley's life in this review. You can discover those for yourself. But would like to comment that Jeals biography has a heavy amount of insightful psychological background to his narrative as well as almost a legal brief defense of Stanley's reputation whom Jeal clearly feels has been badly stereotyped, I found this approach exciting and most interesting although at times I wondered if the unfavorable view of Stanley needed an advocate. But this is a warts and all biography and Jeal does present Stanley as most human. In the end Jeal convinced me that my favorite African Explorer, Richard Burton was not the greatest. Stanley gets the nod now. I highly recommend this book to you. I think you will be amazed by this life and by the way it unfolds through Tim Jeal's exceptional writing.

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Stanley's Sad and Glorious Life

Jeal's wonderful biography of Stanley succeeds on many levels, as biography, history, psychology, cultural analysis and literature. The book brings to life his three great African journeys that made him famous but also captures the other parts of his life: his humble upbringing in Wales, his time in America and his later years in England. Stanley was a complicated man and, after reading the book, I felt I understood him.

The book also provides a good picture of Victorian England and the politics of the European powers towards Africa in the late nineteenth century. His book also reflects on the subsequent developments in Africa that color how we now look at the exploration and colonization of Africa.

Jeal was provided access to a vast trove of Stanley's writings that were previously unavailable. A fascinating part of this book is to see how new information, combined with a writer's keen analysis, can completely upend the standard view of a person or historical event.

All in all, a thoroughly interesting book.

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One of History's Misunderstood Characters

This book tells the story of one of history's most misunderstood and mischaracterized individuals. Henry Stanley rose from poverty to become one of the world's most effective but least known explorers, uncovering central Africa's mysteries and unwittingly creating the groundwork for the rape and bondage of a continent. From the famous but never-uttered "Dr. Livingston, I presume," to the reduced public stature resulting from the self-serving detrimental statements of others, Stanley emerges as a complex man worthy of a better and truer place in history than he accomplished. In addition to the personal tale, this book opens to the reader the state of 19th century Africa and is worth reading if only from this perspective.

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"A magnificent new life . . . [and] a superb adventure story. . . . There have been many biographies of Stanley, but Jeal's is the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable and exhaustive, profiting from his access to an immense new trove of Stanley material." -- Paul Theroux, front page, New York Times Book Review

Henry Morton Stanley, so the tale goes, was a cruel imperialist who connived with King Leopold II of Belgium in horrific crimes against the people of the Congo. He also conducted the most legendary celebrity interview in history, opening with, ?Dr. Livingstone, I presume??

But these perceptions are not quite true, Tim Jeal shows in this grand and colorful biography. With unprecedented access to previously closed Stanley family archives, Jeal reveals the amazing extent to which Stanley?s public career and intimate life have been misunderstood and undervalued. Jeal recovers the reality of Stanley?s life?a life of almost impossible extremes?in this moving story of tragedy, adventure, disappointment, and success.

Few have started life as disadvantaged as Stanley. Rejected by both parents and consigned to a Welsh workhouse, he emigrated to America as a penniless eighteen-year-old. Jeal vividly re-creates Stanley?s rise to success, his friendships and romantic relationships, and his life-changing decision to assume an American identity. Stanley?s epic but unfairly forgotten African journeys are thrillingly described, establishing the explorer as the greatest to set foot on the continent. Few biographies can claim so thoroughly to reappraise a reputation; few portray a more extraordinary historical figure.

(20070301)

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