Hannah Kilham (1774–1832) was a missionary whose aim in her work in the Gambia and Sierra Leone was to teach children in their own indigenous languages rather than in English. In order to do so she learned the Wolof language from African sailors in London and later, in Sierra Leone, collected specimens of thirty languages through her encounters with freed slaves. The first of two publications reissued in this volume, Kilham's Report on a Recent Visit to the Colony of Sierra Leone (1828), discusses the state of education in the colony as well as the general condition of its people. The second, Claims of West Africa to Christian Instruction through the Native Languages (1830) also discusses the system of education, outlining the process of tuition, and emphasising the need for Bible translations into African languages.