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Mary Henrietta Kingsley was an English ethnographer, writer and explorer who traveled throughout West Africa at the turn of the 20th century, writing and publishing several books based on her experiences. Some historians credit Kingsley's work as helping to shape Western perceptions of the culture of Africa. Studies of her work and life have been made through the lenses of feminism, colonialism, economics, and anthropology. During her lifetime, though a supporter of European trade with and in Africa as well as indirect rule, Kingsley was critical of Christian missionary work and European imperialism, as well as popular Darwinian understandings of indigenous cultures and religions. Her work had a direct impact on the development of new economic policies in British imperial holdings and has continued to be studied and analyzed into the modern era. She died of typhoid while volunteering as a nurse in the Boer Wars in South Africa.

Beth Urquhart was born Elizabeth Rodman in Chicago in 1931. She moved often in her early life due to her father's position with the Standard Oil Company, living in Pennyslvania, Texas, California, Michigan, and the Soviet Union. She earned a degree in English literature and the classics from Mills College, in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1957, she was accepted into the Boalt School of Law of the University of California, but withdrew from her law studies in 1958 when she maried Alvin Urquhart and joined the US Naval Reserve as a midshipman. As newlyweds, the two spent time living and researching in Angola, where Urquhart was conducting research for his PhD dissertation in Geography from the University of California Berkeley. While in Angola, Beth cared for the camp where the two and their employees lived. Upon returning to the United States, the two spent time in New Hampshire (where Urquhart taught at Dartmouth) and in Eugene, Oregon. She left the Naval Reserves as a lieutenant in 1964 when she was pregnant with Al's and her first child. With the exception of 1967-1969, when Beth and Al lived in Nigeria where Alvin Urquhart taught at Ahmadu Bello University, the Urquharts lived in Eugene for the next twelve years. The couple had two daughters, Sarah and Helen, and Beth spent time working variously as a secretary and a stay-at-home mother.

In 1971, while living in England during Alvin Urquhart's sabbatical year teaching at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, Beth began researching the life and work of Mary Kingsley. She had read Kingsley's books in the past and was greatly intrigued by her travels and work in western Africa. In England, Beth worked closely with Harold MacMillan to research Kingsley's correspondence held by the MacMillan Publishing Company, which had been a major sponsor of Kingsley's trips.

Beth and Alvin Urquhart divorced in 1976, at which point Beth returned to work with Allstate and moved with the children to Oregon City. In 1984, she bought the Charlotte's Web children's bookstore in Sausalito, California, and moved to nearby Mill Valley to run the business and care for her elderly mother. She concurrently worked as mailroom supervisor for the Mill Valley Record and proofreader for the Pacific Sun newspapers. She died in 1998 following a lengthy battle with oral cancer.

Sources: Alison Blunt, "Only a Woman: Women Travel Writers and Imperialism," MA thesis written for University of Cambridge, 1990, accessed 2025; Cheryl McEwan, "How the "Seraphic" Became "Geographic": Women Travellers in West Africa, 1840-1915," PhD dissertation written for Loughborough University, 1995, accessed 2025; Caroline Alexander, "One dry season: in the footsteps of Mary Kingsley," 1990; and Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kingsley); Alvin Urquhart, "Autobiography," (https://alurquhart.com/autobiography/), accessed April 2025; Obituary, Mill Valley Record, September 12, 1990, accessed April 2025.