Tackling Africa: the resourceful Mrs J. Theodore Bent

This contribution represents a short introduction to the African travel notebooks, or ‘Chronicles’, of Mabel Virginia Anna Bent (1847-1929) - wife of the explorer James Theodore Bent (1852-1887) - and some of the resources consulted during research into the publication of these notebooks. What follows is based on a presentation made at the SCOLMA conference, the University of Birmingham, on 2 July 2014.The 19th century is studded with the derring-do of explorers in Africa and elsewhere, but we have relatively few first-hand records of husband-and-wife partnerships. And Mabel and Theodore Bent really were one of the great British travelling partnerships in terms of their results, the distances covered, and the sheer physical efforts involved over a period of nearly twenty years of journeying together between 1880 and 1897. In particular, Theodore's work in today's Zimbabwe made the couple into explorer-celebrities, and accounts of them at travellers’ soirées, or sharing passenger lists with famous names, such as Stanley, are common. The couple regularly feature in the major relevant bibliographies - archaeological, ethnographical, and travel - to this day.