Double signed by the author : Inscribed to publisher Victor Gollancz

Huxley, Elspeth & Kingdon, Jonathan [Illus.] ~ Forks and Hope : Double Signed By The Author : Association Copy

First UK Printing : Chatto & Windus, London: 1964

8vo., blue cloth lettered in gilt to spine; publisher’s wrapper (30s net) designed by Jonathan Kingdon; who further provides the frontis illustration and another 20 illustrations (one double page); two maps showing game parks and nature reserves, as well as the seasonal movement of wildebeest; THE BOOK with the usual ghosting from the wrapper design onto the upper board and spine, with strip of sunning to the lower edge and a couple of small dents to the extremities; a Very Good++ clean copy otherwise; the Very Good+ WRAPPER marginally toned to the spine and lower flap fold; some dark stains and a small hole to the head of the spine; a little rubbed at the foot, and to the ends of the front flap fold; evidence of previous tape repair to verso now removed, with some residue present. The wrapper remains striking in a removable Brodart archival cover. First edition, double signed by the author, with a warm inscription 'To VG with all love, Elspeth Huxley' to the front free endpaper, and flat signed underneath her crossed-out printed name to the title page. The recipient was the publisher Victor Gollancz. Huxley grew up in colonial Kenya, where her parents had moved in 1912 to start a new life as coffee farmers. Educated in Nairobi, Huxley was strongly influenced by the country she grew up in. Her first book, published shortly after her marriage in 1935, focused on Lord Delamere, one of the first settlers in Kenya. She went on to pen almost 40 works, one of her most notable being Red Strangers, an exploration of Kikuyu life in Kenya. Although initially an advocate of continued colonial rule, she later called for the independence of African nations. Forks and Hope is the result of the three months Huxley spent in Tanganyika, Kenya and Uganda during the year of 1963, during which time she spoke to political leaders, visited new Universities, and watched “the emergence of a new East Africa, feeling its way into a future full of ancient enigmas and new hopes” (wrapper blurb). Visiting Lake Lagarja, the grass plains of the eastern Serengeti, the Ngorongoro crater and Kipikieri Peak, which stands at over 9,000ft, she kept journals and notes for the duration of her trip. "Writing about modern Africa is like trying to sketch a galloping horse that is out of sight before you have sharpened your pencil”, she writes. “So much is happening - because the scene sparkles with new hopes and plans, because nothing is static and nothing seems impossible.” Jonathan Kingdon was born in Tanzania in 1935. A zoologist, science author, and artist, he is currently a research associate at the University of Oxford, and for most of his life he has devoted to taxonomic illustration and evolution of the mammals of Africa. An interesting association copy.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good++
JACKET: Very Good+