Elspeth Huxley (Elspeth Josceline Huxley) Biography

British writer, born in London, brought up mainly in Kenya; her studies at the universities of Reading and Cornell were recorded in Love among the Daughters (1968). She has served on the Empire Marketing Board and the BBC Advisory Council and travelled widely in Africa and America with her husband, Gervas Huxley (a cousin of Aldous Huxley). Among her many books on African history, politics, and agriculture are White Man's Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya (1935), African Dilemmas (1948), Livingstone and His African Journeys (1974), Out in the Midday Sun: My Kenya (1985), and The Nine Faces of Kenya (1990). Perhaps her greatest achievements are The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) and The Mottled Lizard (1962; US title On the Edge of the Rift: Memories of Kenya), which vividly describe the life of her family and fellow British settlers in Africa. Her novels include The Walled City (1948) and A Thing to Love (1954), both reflecting cultural and political tensions among native and European communities in Africa; and several entertaining detective novels, mainly with African settings, such as Murder at Government House (1937), Murder on Safari (1938), Death of an Aryan (1939; reprinted as The African Poison Murders, 1986), and The Merry Hippo (1963; US title The Incident at the Merry Hippo).