Elspeth Huxley’s Followers (67)

Elspeth Huxley

Born

in London, The United Kingdom

July 23, 1907

Died

January 10, 1997

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Biographies & Memoirs, Nonfiction

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Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE was a polymath, writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government advisor. She wrote 30 books; but she is best known for her lyrical books The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard which were based on her experiences growing up in a coffee farm in Colonial Kenya.

Nellie and Major Josceline Grant, Elspeth Grant's parents, arrived in Thika in what was then British East Africa in 1912, when she was 5 years old, to start a life as coffee farmers and colonial settlers. Flame Trees... explores how unprepared for rustic life the early British settlers really were. Elspeth was educated at a whites only school in Nairobi.

She left Africa in 1925, earning a degree in agriculture at Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE was a polymath, writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government advisor. She wrote 30 books; but she is best known for her lyrical books The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard which were based on her experiences growing up in a coffee farm in Colonial Kenya.

Nellie and Major Josceline Grant, Elspeth Grant's parents, arrived in Thika in what was then British East Africa in 1912, when she was 5 years old, to start a life as coffee farmers and colonial settlers. Flame Trees... explores how unprepared for rustic life the early British settlers really were. Elspeth was educated at a whites only school in Nairobi.

She left Africa in 1925, earning a degree in agriculture at Reading University in England and studying at Cornell University in upstate New York. Elspeth returned to Africa periodically, becoming the Assistant Press Officer to the Empire Marketing Board in 1929. She married Gervas Huxley, a cousin of Aldous Huxley in 1931. They had one son, Charles, who was born in February 1944. She resigned her post in 1932 and traveled widely. She was appointed an independent member of the Advisory Commission for the Review of the Constitution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (the Monckton Commission). An advocate of colonialism early in life, she later called for independence for African countries. In the 1960s, she served as a correspondent for the National Review magazine.

Most of Elspeth Huxley's writing reflects on her experiences growing up in Kenya and her continued interest in African development. Her output includes both novels and non-fiction: autobiography, travel writing, political exposition, biography, and journalism, produced throughout the latter half of the twentieth century—her book-publishing career alone spanned more than sixty years. Sympathising from the beginning with the white settlers and increasingly with the black Africans, with a professional background in agriculture as well as journalism, she became a skilled interpreter of Africa to the world outside, even while remembering that "no person of one race and culture can truly interpret events from the angle of individuals" who belong to a "different race and culture." This has not exempted her from later strong critique of her racial attitudes: attitudes which were normal, nearly inescapable, for her generation, her race, and her colonial identity.
As a professional she prided herself on being able to turn her pen to anything. Her polemical writing on environmental issues, for instance, deserves to be better known. ...more

Combine Editions
Elspeth Huxley’s books

Average rating: 4.06 · 6,907 ratings · 528 reviews · 64 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood 4.11 avg rating — 5,535 ratings — published 1959 — 35 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Mottled Lizard 4.03 avg rating — 428 ratings — published 1962 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Red Strangers by Elspeth Huxley, Richard Dawkins (Goodreads Author) (Introduction) 4.24 avg rating — 189 ratings — published 1939 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Out in the Midday Sun 3.83 avg rating — 198 ratings — published 1985 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Murder on Safari (Inspector Vachell Mysteries #2) 3.54 avg rating — 121 ratings — published 1938 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The African Poison Murders (Inspector Vachell Mysteries #3) 3.43 avg rating — 94 ratings — published 1939 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Murder at Government House 3.32 avg rating — 66 ratings — published 1937 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Scott of the Antarctic 4.05 avg rating — 41 ratings — published 1977 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nine Faces of Kenya 3.94 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 1991 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nellie: Letters from Africa 4.21 avg rating — 19 ratings — published 1980 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Elspeth Huxley…

Series by Elspeth Huxley

Elspeth Huxley's Childhood Memoirs (2 books)
by

Elspeth Huxley

4.11 avg rating — 5,963 ratings

Inspector Vachell Mysteries (3 books)
by

Elspeth Huxley

3.45 avg rating — 281 ratings

Quotes by Elspeth Huxley (?)

“How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water.”
― Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood

tags: filters

1057 likes

“this was a moment of magic revealing to us all, for a few moments, a hidden world of grace and wonder beyond the one of which our eyes told us, a world that no words could delineate, as insubstanttial as a cloud, as iridescent as a dragon-fly and as innocent as the heart of a rose.”
― Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood

tags: magic

18 likes

“Tilly was downcast; as with all perfectionists, it was the detail others might not notice that destroyed for her the pleasure of achievement.”
― Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood

tags: perfectionism

14 likes

See all Elspeth Huxley's quotes »

Polls

2013 Empire Challenge: Non-Fiction - Biography/Memoir/Letters

Out of Africa by Karen Blixen

8 votes, 21.1%

On a Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Maugham

5 votes, 13.2%

The Flame Trees Of Thika by Elspeth Huxley

5 votes, 13.2%

The Bolter: Edwardian Heartbreak and High Society Scandal in Kenya by Frances Osborne

5 votes, 13.2%

Maharanis: The Extraordinary Tale of Four Indian Queens and Their Journey from Purdah to Parliament by Lucy Moore

3 votes, 7.9%

Lilla's Feast by Frances Osbourne

3 votes, 7.9%

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell

2 votes, 5.3%

Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark by Jane Fletcher Geniesse

2 votes, 5.3%

Aké: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka

1 vote, 2.6%

The Temptress: The Scandalous Life Of Alice, Countess De Janzé by Paul Spicer

1 vote, 2.6%

The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad C. Chaudhuri

1 vote, 2.6%

Hindoo Holiday by J.R. Ackerley

1 vote, 2.6%

The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays by Chinua Achebe

1 vote, 2.6%

On Another Man's Wound by Ernie O'Malley

0 votes, 0.0%

The Gentleman In The Parlour by W. Somerset Maugham

0 votes, 0.0%

Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai by Robert A. Bickers

0 votes, 0.0%

The Mottled Lizard by Elspeth Huxley

0 votes, 0.0%

The Splendid Outcast: Beryl Markham's African Stories by Beryl Markham

0 votes, 0.0%

Shadows On The Grass by Karen Blixen

0 votes, 0.0%

Memoirs of a Political Officer's Wife: In Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan by Margaret D. Williamson

0 votes, 0.0%

38 total votes

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Elspeth Huxley’s Followers (67)

Elspeth Huxley

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Elspeth Huxley’s books