I picked up Alan Gallop’s Mr Stanley, I Presume? largely because of my interest in colonial pulp gaming. At first glance that may seem an odd reason to read a biography of Henry Morton Stanley, but Stanley sits behind much of the imagery that feeds the genre: expeditions, river journeys, armed porters, lost routes, hostile terrain, rival adventurers, and the confident Victorian belief that the world existed to be mapped, crossed and claimed. He is almost a ready-made pulp character: journalist, explorer, self-inventor, celebrity, imperial agent and ruthless survivor.

Yet that is also why the book needs to be read carefully. Colonial pulp gaming often turns the period into colourful adventure, but Stanley’s real career was tied to violence, coercion, racial arrogance and the brutal opening of the Congo. Gallop’s biography interested me because it helps look behind the adventure story and see the harder historical reality beneath it. For a gamer, the period offers rich scenario material, but it also requires judgement. The trick is to use the drama of the setting without forgetting the world that produced it.

Gallop’s biography is a solid and readable account of one of the most famous and troubling figures of nineteenth century exploration. The title plays on the famous meeting with Livingstone, but the book is really about the man behind the phrase. Stanley was born John Rowlands in Denbigh, Wales, and later remade himself as Henry Morton Stanley, American journalist, explorer and public figure. Gallop is good at showing this process of self-invention. Stanley was not simply exploring Africa. He was also manufacturing Stanley.

The book works best when it presents Stanley as driven, wounded, ambitious and often difficult. Gallop avoids turning him into the clean heroic figure of Victorian adventure writing. Stanley’s endurance was extraordinary, and his journeys through Central Africa were remarkable feats. He understood publicity, newspapers, lectures and the power of a memorable phrase. In that sense he feels surprisingly modern.

Where the book is less satisfying is in its treatment of the wider imperial damage surrounding Stanley’s career. Any modern reading of Stanley must deal with his connection to King Leopold II’s Congo project. Gallop does not ignore the darker side, but the book remains mostly a biography of Stanley rather than a deeper study of African experience, colonial violence or the horrors that followed in the Congo Free State. That makes the book accessible, but it also leaves some hard questions only partly answered.

For a general reader, Mr Stanley, I Presume? is a useful introduction. It gives the shape of Stanley’s life without burying the reader in academic argument. For someone interested in colonial pulp gaming, it is also a reminder that the raw material of adventure stories often came from a brutal and unequal world. There are scenarios everywhere in Stanley’s life, but there are also traps for the unwary gamer or writer.

Overall, this is a readable and engaging biography of a remarkable but deeply compromised man. It restores Stanley as a complicated human being rather than leaving him trapped inside one famous sentence. It should not be the final word on Stanley, the Congo or European imperialism, but it is a good starting point. Read alongside more critical histories of the Congo, it becomes much more useful.

Verdict: a strong introductory biography, clear and accessible, but less complete as a modern reckoning with the imperial world Stanley helped create.