Frank Worthington

Born in 1874 and dying in 1964, Frank Worthington is identified in archival and bibliographic records as a government official in Rhodesia and later a War Office censor. Trinity College Cambridge’s archives describe him as a diplomat in Rhodesia and a War Office censor, while The Witch Doctor and Other Rhodesian Studies presents him as a former Secretary for Native Affairs in Northern Rhodesia.

Those roles shaped his books. A biographical note from Zambezi Book Company says he arrived at Kazungula in 1898 with Robert Coryndon and spent years in the region, and his best-known work, The Witch Doctor and Other Rhodesian Studies, draws on that background in a series of sketches and stories set in colonial Rhodesia. He also wrote Kalulu the Hare, a collection of animal tales that was published as a children’s book and credited as both written and illustrated by him.

Worthington’s work is now mainly read as a historical window into the attitudes and storytelling of his time. For modern readers, that makes him interesting both as a narrator of colonial-era life and as a reminder that books from that period reflect the assumptions of the world that produced them.