ABSTRACT
In 1891, Jessie Monteath Currie travelled from Scotland to join her husband on a remote mission station at Mount Mulanje, British Central Africa. Her 1920 memoir, The Hill of Good-Bye vividly describes her experiences, including her intense loneliness. This chapter explores the depiction of loneliness in Jessie Currie’s memoir. It interrogates loneliness in a colonial context, where it was not dictated by an absence of people but by cultural distance and a lack of intimate friendship. It also explores the porous boundary between loneliness, mental illness and physical illness. Lastly, it considers the role of fear and vulnerability. Overall, it positions loneliness as a defining experience for British women in colonial Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
