From her youth in Kenya through her adult life in Wiltshire, Elspeth Josceline Huxley faithfully recorded some of the most significant developments in Africa during the twentieth century. Noted for her forthright statements, her “sociological” sharpness of insight, and her intense involvement in environmental issues long before the ecological movement began, Huxley wrote about the personal impact of “the winds of change” that swept across the British Empire.

Huxley's travel writing includes not only her accounts of travel in Africa and Australia but also her other nonfiction works and her novels, all of which carry the reader imaginatively to a land far from Britain. Because Huxley's parents were settlers in Kenya, her travel writing has a less Eurocentric perspective than that of her contemporary male adventurer-explorers. Although her viewpoint is consistently British, Huxley had an affinity for Africa that stems from happy childhood memories. She also avoided the...