David Livingstone: man, myth and legacy

Abstract

• David Livingstone (1813-73) rose from being a factory boy in the west of Scotland to become an African explorer and a hero of the Victorian age. He was the first European to document Malawi in the mid 1800s and he continues to be remembered there - and in the David Livingstone Centre in his birthplace Blantyre, which holds a wide range of his personal belongings and travel aids. The essays assembled in this book present a twenty-first view of David Livingstone - the man, the myth and the legacy. They engage not only with matters of history - his life and work as explorer, doctor and missionary - but also with the ways in which he as been memorialised, and his contemporary significance.