Elspeth Huxley
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Elspeth Huxley CBE |
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|---|---|
| Born | Grant July 23, 1907 Thika, British East Africa |
| Died | January 10, 1997 (aged 89) Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England |
| Occupation | Author, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Reading University |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Subject | Her youth in a coffee farm in British Kenya |
| Notable works | The Flame Trees of Thika, The Mottled Lizard |
| Spouse | Gervas Huxley |
Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE (née Grant; 23 July 1907 – 10 January 1997) was an author, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser. She wrote 30 books, including her best-known lyrical books, The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, based on her youth in a coffee farm in British Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.
Nellie and Major Josceline Grant, Elspeth Grant's parents, arrived in Thika in what was then British East Africa in 1912, to start a life as coffee farmers and colonial settlers. Huxley, aged six, arrived in December 1913, complete with governess and maid. Her upbringing was unconventional; she was "almost treated as a parcel, being passed from hand to hand". Huxley's 1959 book The Flame Trees of Thika explores how unprepared for rustic life the early British settlers really were. It was adapted as the 1981 television series The Flame Trees of Thika. 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. She married Gervas Huxley, the son of the doctor Henry Huxley (1865–1946) in 1931. They had one son, Charles, who was born in February 1944.
Huxley started writing soon after her marriage; her first book was published in 1935. Her final tally of 42 books included the ten works of fiction and 29 non-fictional books listed below, as well as thousands of pamphlets and articles.
Huxley was appointed Assistant Press Officer to the Empire Marketing Board in 1929. She resigned her post in 1932 and travelled widely. During this period, she published her first works including Lord Delamere and the making of Kenya, a biography of the famous settler.
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