ELSPETH HUXLEY: A Biography - Softcover

Nicholls, C. S.

4.23

47 ratings by Goodreads

9780007292042: ELSPETH HUXLEY: A Biography

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000729204X ISBN 13: 9780007292042

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2008

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

The first biography of the renowned writer, broadcaster, conservationist and chronicler of colonial Kenya, whose lyrical and evocative memoir The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) achieved worldwide fame when made into a television drama series in 1981. Colonial Kenya inspired three great writers - Karen Blixen (Out of Africa), Beryl Markham (West with the Night) and Elspeth Huxley. Huxley's writings (30 books in all: novels, biographies, political accounts) have great political and social range, encompassing (in her Kenyan books) the exploits of the Happy Valley farmers - made famous by James Fox's book White Mischief, poor white farmers and the lives of Africans alike. After a childhood spent in East Africa and wartime Britain, Elspeth married Gervas, a grandson of Thomas Huxley and cousin to Julian and Aldous Huxley, whom she knew well. She also later got to know Joy Adamson and the Leakeys. She travelled widely with her husband (an executive with the Empire Marketing Board) and wrote while constantly on the move. She worked for the BBC in World War II and became a Kenyan government adviser. In 1938 she bought a farm in Wiltshire, where she died in 1997. The author, Christine Nicholls, has access to all her letters and papers, and is familiar with many of the people and places in the book. Elspeth Huxley was a compelling personality and a brilliant letter-writer, extraordinarily energetic and effective in everything she did.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Back Cover:

“Delicious stories...I recommend this excellent biography to anybody who cares for Huxley's books and for Kenya.”---Aiden Hartley, Literary Review [U.K.]

“C. S. Nicholls interweaves this personal tale with the intriguing social and political theory of colonial Kenya...accomplished.”---Sunday Times [U.K.]

“Well organized and thoroughly researched.”---Daily Telegraph [U.K.]

“[Nicholls] is a wonderfully informed authority about the externals of life---the dates, the events, the who, and where of it all...scrupulous.”---New Statesman [U.K.]

About the Author:

Christine Nicholls grew up in East Africa and knew many of the people in Elspeth Huxley's circle. She was coeditor and then sole editor of The Dictionary of Natural Biography for twenty years, and also edited The Hutchinson Encyclopedia of Biography. Her other books include The Swahili Coast, Cataract, Power: A Political History of the Twentieth Century, a biography of David Livingstone and the official history of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. She lives in Oxford.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.