"There is a long chain of accounts by literary travellers to the Congo over more than a century, and it is good to have one such revealing narrative carefully restored to an uncensored version at last. The chilling episode at its heart reminds one of the cruel megalomania of Joseph Conrad's Mr. Kurtz." Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost "This fascinating, contemporaneous account will appeal to intrepid travelers." Library Journal "A serious advance in state-of-the-art research. Rapley's scholarship is exceedingly sound. She thinks in such stimulating and logical ways that the exercise is never tedious, always intellectually challenging and, above all, interesting ... The extent of the research is prodigious and Rapley is so familiar with her vast documentation that she's been able to construct a new and more comprehensive interpretation than has previously been imagined of the nature of the social life of women's monasteries under the ancien regime." D. Gillian Thompson, Department of History, University of New Brunswick "A very good synthesis of female religious life." Craig Harline, Department of History, Brigham Young University