William Henry Hudson

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William H. Hudson

William Henry Hudson (August 4, 1841 – August 18, 1922) was an author, naturalist and ornithologist.

Hudson was born of U.S. parents living in the Quilmes Partido in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, where he lived until moving to the United Kingdom. He spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna and observing both natural and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier, publishing his ornithological work in Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society, initially in an English contaminated with Spanish idioms. He settled in England in 1869. He produced a series of ornithological studies, including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895), and later achieved fame with his books on the English countryside, including Hampshire Days (1903), Afoot in England (1909) and A Shepherd's Life (1910) which helped foster the back-to-nature movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

He was a founder member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

His best known novel is Green Mansions (1904), and his best known and loved non-fiction is Far Away and Long Ago (1931).

In Argentina he is considered to belong to the national literature as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, the Spanish translation of his name. A town in Berazategui Partido and several other public places and institutions are named after him.

Towards the end of his life he moved to the town of Worthing in Sussex, England. His grave is in Broadwater (part of Worthing), West Sussex, England.

[edit] Works

The Purple Land that England Lost. Travels and Adventures in the Banda Oriental, South America (1885)
A Crystal Age (1887)
Argentine Ornithology (1888)
Fan-The Story of a Young Girl's Life (1892) as Henry Harford
The Naturalist in la Plata (1892)
Idle Days in Patagonia (1893)
Birds in a Village (1893)
Lost British Birds (1894) pamphlet
British Birds (1895)
Osprey; or, Egrets and Aigrettes (1896)
Birds in London (1898)
Nature in Downland (1900)
Birds and Man (1901)
El Ombu (1902) stories, later South American Sketches.
Hampshire Days (1903)
Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904)
A Little Boy Lost (1905)
Land's End. A Naturalist's Impressions in West Cornwall (1908)
Afoot in England (1909)
A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs (1910)
Adventures Among Birds (1913)
Tales of the Pampas (1916)
The Book of a Naturalist (1919)
Birds in Town and Village (1919)
Birds of La Plata (1920) two volumes
Dead Man's Plack and An Old Thorn (1920)
A Traveller in Little Things (1921)
Tired Traveller (1921) essay
Seagulls In London. Why They Took To Coming To Town (1922) essay
Hind in Richmond Park (1922)
The Collected Works (1922-23) 24 volumes
153 Letters from W.H. Hudson (Nonesuch Press. 1923) edited by Edward Garnett
Rare Vanishing & Lost British Birds (1923)
Ralph Herne (1923)
Men, Books and Birds (1925)
The Disappointed Squirrel (1925) from The Book of a Naturalist.
Mary's Little Lamb (1929)
South American Romances (1930) The Purple Land; Green Mansions; El Ombú
Far Away and Long Ago - A History of My Early Life (1931)
W.H. Hudson's Letters to R. B. Cunninghame Graham (Golden Cockerel Press 1941)
Tales of the Gauchos (1946)
Letters on the ornithology of Buenos Ayres.(1951) edited by David W. Dewar
Diary Concerning his Voyage from Buenos Aires to Southampton on the Ebro (1958)
Gauchos of the Pampas and Their Horses (1963) stories, with R.B. Cunninghame Graham
English Birds and Green Places: Selected Writings (1964) ISBN 0-575-07207-5
Birds of A Feather: Unpublished Letters of W.H. Hudson (1981) edited by D. Shrubsall