Elspeth huxley biography graphic organizer
Elspeth Huxley
English writer, journalist, magistrate, environmentalist and adviser
Elspeth Huxley CBE | |
|---|---|
| Born | Elspeth Grant ()23 July London[1] |
| Died | 10 January () (aged&#;89) Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England |
| Occupation | Author, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma&#;mater | Reading University, Cornell University |
| Subject | Settler life in British Kenya |
| Notable works | The Flame Trees of Thika, The Mottled Lizard |
| Spouse | Gervas Huxley |
| Relatives | Huxley family |
Elspeth Joscelin HuxleyCBE (née Grant; 23 July &#;– 10 January )[1] was an English writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser.[2] She wrote over 40 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.
Elspeth huxley biography graphic organizer Huxley's mother Nellie was also an adventuring entrepreneur who went into business with Trudie Denman , buying, training and selling ponies. Delamere, who died in , had lived for 30 years in Kenya and was one of the central figures in that country's development and government. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. In the s and s, her far-ranging interests led her to write books on philanthropists, immigrants in Britain, modern food production, travel in Australia and, of course, Africa, and explorers, such as Livingstone and His African Journeys and Scott of the Antarctic.Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.[3]
Early life and education
See also: Huxley family
Nellie and Major Josceline Grant, Elspeth's parents, arrived in Thika in what was then British East Africa in , to start a life as coffee farmers in colonial Kenya.
Elspeth, aged six, arrived in December , complete with governess and maid.[4] Her upbringing was unconventional; she was "almost treated as a parcel, being passed from hand to hand".[4] Huxley's book The Flame Trees of Thika explores how unprepared for rustic life the early British settlers really were.
It was adapted into a television miniseries in Elspeth was educated at a whites-only school in Nairobi.
She left Africa in , earning a degree in agriculture at Reading University in England and studying at Cornell University in upstate New York.[2] She returned to Africa periodically.
Career
Huxley was appointed Assistant Press Officer to the Empire Marketing Board in She resigned her post in and travelled widely. Huxley started writing soon after her marriage; her first book, White Man's Country: Lord Delamere and the making of Kenya about the famous white settler, was published in
Huxley's book Red Strangers describes life among the Kikuyu of Kenya around the time of the arrival of the first European settlers.
The manuscript was sent first to the publisher Macmillan, but Harold Macmillan, then working for the family firm, agreed to publish it only with considerable cuts, including a graphic description of female circumcision. Huxley refused, and the book was published by Chatto & Windus.
Huxley remembered: "It was indeed a happy day for me when our future Prime Minister couldn't take clitoridectomy."[4] The book was republished by Penguin Books in and again by Penguin Classics in ; Richard Dawkins played an important role in getting the book republished, and wrote a preface to the new edition.
Her final tally of 42[4] books included the ten works of fiction and 29 non-fiction books, as well as thousands of pamphlets and articles.[5]
During the Second World War, Huxley was a broadcaster for the BBC.[4]
In , Huxley 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).
Although she was initially an advocate of continued colonial rule, she later called for the independence of African nations.[3]
In the s, she served as a correspondent for the National Review magazine.
Huxley was a friend of Joy Adamson,[3] the author of Born Free, and is mentioned in the biography of Joy and George Adamson entitled The Great Safari.
Scholastic biography poster report: Huysmans, Jacob. See also: Huxley family. His first assignment was a trip to Ceylon now Sri Lanka off the coast of India. During the s and s, Huxley wrote prolifically, having her fiction and nonfiction books, primarily on Africa, published almost yearly.
Huxley wrote the foreword to Joy's autobiography The Searching Spirit.
Personal life
She married Gervas Huxley, the son of doctor Henry Huxley (–) in [6] They had one son, Charles, who was born in February
Death and legacy
Huxley died on 10 January aged 89, in a nursing home at Tetbury in Gloucestershire, England.[2]
A collection of twelve boxes of photographs, prints, negatives, contact prints and slides is held at Bristol Archives in the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection.
Most of the photographs were taken by Huxley, with the rest collected by her. The collection covers Huxley's whole career () and subject matter includes Kenyan safari landscapes and local people (specifically the Kikuyu people), the Mau Mau uprising, white settlers, Edwardian Mombasa, and a transcript of an oral history interview taken by the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (Ref.
/).[7] Other collections related to Huxley can be found at the Bodleian Library and Cambridge University Library Department of Manuscripts and University Archives.[8]
Christine S. Nicholls wrote Elspeth Huxley: A Biography, published by Harper Collins in
Honours
Works
Fiction
- Murder at Government House ()
- Murder on Safari ()
- Death of an Aryan (U.S.:The African Poison Murders) ()
- Red Strangers () ISBN&#;
- The Walled City ()
- A Thing to Love ()
- The Red Rock Wilderness ()
- The Merry Hippo (U.S.: The Incident at the Merry Hippo) ()
- A Man from Nowhere ()
- The Prince Buys the Manor ()
Non-fiction
- White Man's Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya ()
- EAST AFRICA ()
- Atlantic Ordeal: The Story of Mary Cornish ()
- African Dilemmas ()
- Settlers of Kenya ()
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice: A Journey Through Africa ()
- I Don't Mind If I Do ()
- Four Guineas: A Journey Through West Africa () - contains facts about slavery in West Africa.
- No Easy Way: A History of the Kenyan Farmers' Association and UNGA Limited ()
- The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood ()
- A New Earth: An Experiment in Colonialism ()
- The Mottled Lizard (U.S.: On the Edge of the Rift: Memories of Kenya) ()
- Back Street New Worlds: A Look at Immigrants in Britain ()
- With Forks and Hope: An African Notebook ()
- Brave New Victuals: An Inquiry into Modern Food Production ()
- Their Shining Eldorado: A Journey Through Australia ()
- Love among the Daughters ()
- The Challenge of Africa ()
- The Kingsleys: A Biographical Anthology ()
- Livingstone and His African Journeys ()
- Florence Nightingale ()
- Gallipot Eyes: A Wiltshire Diary ()
- Scott of the Antarctic ()
- Nellie: Letters from Africa ()
- Whipsnade: Captive Breeding for Survival ()
- Last Days in Eden aka De Laatsten in de Hof van Eden () with Hugo van Lawick
- Out in the Midday Sun: My Kenya ()
- Nine Faces of Kenya: Portrait of a Nation ()
- Peter Scott: Painter and Naturalist ()
See also
References
- ^ abFitzgerald, Mary Anne (13 January ).
"Obituary: Elspeth Huxley". The Independent. Retrieved 1 September
- ^ abcd Lyall, Sarah.Biography essay graphic organizer When Huxley was five, her parents decided to try their luck in an exciting "new" country that was then the talk of London. Nellie and Major Josceline Grant, Elspeth's parents, arrived in Thika in what was then British East Africa in , to start a life as coffee farmers in colonial Kenya. Early life and education [ edit ]. The original publishers, Macmillan, who had also released Huxley's first book, White Man's Country, felt that a portion of Red Strangers, about female circumcision, was inappropriate for their readership, so they blithely rewrote it.
"Elspeth Huxley, 89, Chronicler of Colonial Kenya, Dies", New York Times, 18 January
- ^ abc C. S. Nicholls. Elspeth Huxley: A Biography. London: HarperCollins,
- ^ abcdeHuxley, Elspeth (12 July ).
"Cruel cuts for excising PM". Times Higher Education.
Elspeth huxley biography graphic organizer pdf Whether [Huxley] is detailing the past and present of friends and relations, describing the death of a fox or Prohibition picnic orgies, she is funny, bawdy, serious, nostalgic and always entertaining. In , the onset of the Depression threatened her job, and, when she married Gervas Huxley in , she was axed because of the recently instituted Marriage Bar that prohibited married women from serving in the civil service. Elspeth Grant 23 July London [ 1 ]. She was also busy writing for newspapers and magazines.Retrieved 1 September (subscription required)
- ^"JSTOR". African Studies Companion Online. Retrieved 1 February
- ^"Elspeth Huxley". . Retrieved 1 February
- ^"online catalogue".Elspeth huxley biography graphic organizer printable At one point during their several-months' stay, the inviting challenge of the mountain, at 17, the tallest in Kenya, became too much for Huxley's mother. Elspeth Huxley. Learn more. Roland Burkitt, a surgeon from Ireland who had set up the first private practice in in Nairobi, Kenya, and who believed ultra-violet rays from the tropical sun to be lethal.
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- ^"The National Archives Discovery Catalogue page". Retrieved 22 March
Bibliography
- Giffuni, Cathe. "A Bibliography of the Mystery Writings of Elspeth Huxley," Clues: Volume 12 No. 2 Fall/Winter , pp.&#;45–