Pimenova, E.K.: African Nature and Peoples

Title

Priroda i liudi Afriki, Sankt-Peterburg 19103 (first edition: 1900)

African Nature and Peoples

Keywords

Summary

The volume is divided into six chapters. The first one is dedicated to the Europeans’ encounters with Africa and their explorations of the continent; particular attention is paid to Livingstone, Stanley and Emin Pasha. The second chapter focuses on the African population, i.e. “negroes”, and on the problem of slavery. The third chapter is entirely devoted to Egypt, its geography, population, and ancient history. In the fourth chapter Pimenova describes North-West Africa (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania), while in the fifth she concentrates on Ethiopia and its current affairs with Italy. The final chapter covers South Africa (local inhabitants and European colonisation). The book is illustrated with both drawings and photos.

Bio

Emiliia Pimenova (née Petrichenko) was a Russian writer and translator, especially committed to popular and children’s literature. Her father was a counter admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy, while her mother, of noble origins, was a translator and journalist. During her childhood, she moved quite a lot due to her father’s profession. In 1868, while living on the island of Ashuradeh on the Caspian Sea, she met Henry Stanley, and followed him on an expedition in the Caspian region as a translator (1869). She later enrolled at the Saint Petersburg Military Medical Academy to study as a midwife, and practised the profession for a few years in a village near the capital. Having left her husband, she moved with her children to Saint Petersburg, where she started to work as a translator and journalist for various periodicals. An advocate of women’s rights and emancipation, she was also close to the revolutionary movements and, especially, to the Mensheviks. She published extensively on socio-political topics, geography and ethnography, with the intent of educating the masses and raising awareness on societal issues. In addition to her authored volumes, she also translated works by H.G. Wells, E. Salgari, K. Hamsun, J. Conrad, R.L. Stevenson, H. Taine and others.

Sources

“Pimenova (Emiliia Kirillovna)”, in Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ Brokgauza i Efrona, dop. t. 2, Sankt-Peterburg 1906, p. 409;

E. Pimenova, Dni minuvshie. Vospominaniia E.K. Pimenovoi, Moskva-Leningrad 1929;

“Pimenova Emiliia Kirillovna”, in Russkie pisateli. 1800-1917, t. 4, Moskva 1999, p. 604-606.

A.F.

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