The Walled City Signed Elspeth Huxley first edition 1948

London: Chatto & Windus, 1948  
 
8vo., bright red publisher’s cloth, lettered in pale blue to backstrip; together in the original, unclipped dustwrapper (10s 6d net), with a vibrant design by Edward Bawden; pp. [iv], v-xvi, 319, [i]; a very good copy, small bump to lower corner of front board, and light compression to spine tips; endpapers faintly spotted and offset; title page with faint diagonal crease; otherwise a bright copy, the very good dustwrapper retaining almost all of its brightness to the upper panel; slightly sunned along with backstrip, with overall light shelfwear and some nicks to ends of spine/flap folds; one small hole to foot of spine; a couple of small spots to the lower panel; discreetly repaired internally with tape to head of spine; a wonderful example, nonetheless. 
 
The true first edition, considerably more scarce than the Book Club edition published the same year. This copy signed by the author facing title page. 
 
Set in Northern Nigeria in the aftermath of the First World War, Huxley weaves a narrative around the juxtaposition of two colonial administrators; Freddy, the cautious and meticulous civil servant, and Robert, the enigmatic visionary. With personal conflict growing between them and their wives, Amorel and Priscilla, the decaying authority of the British administration leads one of them to question the whole basis of imperial power. 
 
Huxley was well-placed to write on issues of colonialism. With her parents making the move to Thika in 1912 to open a coffee farm, Elspeth was initially an advocate of colonial rule, growing up as a British settler in Kenya and receiving her education at a school in Nairobi. In later life, however, she would call for the independence of African nations. The Walled City was her fifth novel, and followed directly on from the success of Red Strangers, in which she told the story of European settlers from the perspective of four generations of  Kikuyu tribesmen. 
 
The book is wonderfully offset with a dustwrapper by Edward Bawden, who designed a vast number of jackets between the 1920s to the 1980s. This instantly-recognisable example shows a man on horseback, another pulling a banner with the title half written to the upper edge, and an oversized sheet on a table with a coffee cup showing the ‘The Chanticleer’ alongside an image of Benjamin Morris.
 
Scarce signed.