William Henry Hudson (1841-1922)
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W. H. Hudson: Far Away and Long Ago (1918)
W. H. Hudson: South American Romances (1930)
[Mylar'd: Auckland, June 4, 2020]:
A long, long time ago, in a city far, far away, I arrived one day at the office of the Head of the English Department to take up my new role as a Doctoral student there. His name was Wallace Robson, and he had once been a mildly famous critic in the 'Movement' of the 1950s. He had a rather disconcerting way of staring at the ceiling whilst speaking to you, and appeared to be incapable of pausing his monologue even briefly to register any response.
My own designated supervisor, Colin Manlove (author of Modern Fantasy, The Impulse of Fantasy Literature, and various other books in the same vein), was unfortunately in hospital at the time having an eye operation. When I did eventually meet Mr. Manlove, he was wearing a black patch over one eye, a bit like Long John Silver, which added not a little to the terrifying effect of his demeanour. He was a kindly man, really, I think, but not very good at showing it.
The result was that Professor Robson had appointed himself to act as my interim supervisor. I presented him with a copy of an essay I had written on the subject of imaginary countries in South America, and he immediately made an executive decision that this should form the subject of my thesis, rather than the wider topic of imaginary countries in fiction I had originally had in mind.
One of his colleagues once referred to Robson's thought processes as 'bouncing off the immense trampoline of that man's mind.' One of my classmates was sure that he had died during their initial interview, as he stared at the ceiling, immobile, for so long, that my friend was on the point of going over and waving a hand in front of his face to see if he would react, when finally that langorous, imperturbable voice started up again.
What Robson had to say about my project was, first, falsely flattering - 'You're a mature scholar' (I wasn't) - and next, about my initial choice of texts - 'Someone asked me if there was any room in the market for a book about W. H. Hudson. I told them I thought not. There's really nothing there, I said.'
I wonder, in retrospect, if this was Amy D. Ronner's book W. H. Hudson: The Man, The Novelist, The Naturalist (1986), which would roughly fit the date of our conversation? If so, I'm glad she persevered and that her book did finally see the light of day. Even at the time I was a bit taken aback by the dismissive arrogance of his remark, but perhaps it's true that Hudson has been one of the hardest of the great Edwardians to resurrect.
Given Robson's view, enshrined in A Prologue to English Literature, that the principal significance of Molly Bloom's soliloquoy in Ulysses is that it demonstrates once and for all 'that women can't punctuate,' I suppose it was one of the milder opinions of this former enfant terrible.
Never mind. Having in the course of my studies waded through many a weary tome by W. H. Hudson, I wonder sometimes if Old Man Robson had a point about him. I do still have a bit of a soft spot for the most famous of his South American romances, Green Mansions, though.
If you're curious to know what I ended up having to say about the man (W. H. Hudson, that is, not Professor Robson), you're very welcome to check it out here, on the website dedicated to my Doctoral thesis, "An Elusive Identity: Versions of South America in English Literature from Aphra Behn to the Present Day" (University of Edinburgh: PhD, 1990).
Given the return of the pastoral mode to comparative critical and creative respectability after an awfully long time in the doldrums, Hudson may yet become a major literary figure again. I doubt it, though. That belletristic tradition is awfully hard to appreciate in our more rapid and technical age. He certainly suited my purposes very well, however.
I don't have a copy of the 24-volume set of his collected works, and wouldn't know where to house it if I did, but I do have most of the individual volumes squirreled away in one place or another (I've marked all the ones I own in bold below):
W. H. Hudson: Collected Works (1922-23)
- The Purple Land (1885)
- A Crystal Age (1887)
- The Naturalist in la Plata (1892)
- Fan – The Story of a Young Girl's Life (1892)
- Idle Days in Patagonia (1893)
- British Birds (1895)
- Birds in London (1898)
- Nature in Downland (1900)
- Birds and Man (1901)
- El Ombú and Other South American Stories (1902)
- Hampshire Days (1903)
- Green Mansions (1904)
- A Little Boy Lost & Various Poems (1905)
- Land's End (1908)
- Afoot in England (1909)
- A Shepherd's Life (1910)
- Adventures Among Birds (1913)
- Far Away and Long Ago (1918)
- The Book of a Naturalist (1919)
- Birds in Town and Village (1919)
- Birds of La Plata (1920)
- Dead Man's Plack, An Old Thorn & Miscellanea (1920)
- A Traveller in Little Things (1921)
- A Hind in Richmond Park (1922)
W. H. Hudson: Collected Works (1922-23)
Books I own are marked in bold:
- The Purple Land that England Lost: Travels and Adventures in the Banda Oriental, South America. 2 vols (1885):
- The Purple Land: Being the Narrative of one Richard Lamb’s Adventures in the Banda Orientál, in South America, as told by Himself. 1885. The Readers’ Library. Rev. ed. 1904. London: Duckworth & Co., 1911.
- The Purple Land: Being the Narrative of one Richard Lamb’s Adventure in the Banda Orientál in South America, as told by Himself. 1885. Rev. ed. 1904. Introduction by David Garnett. The Works of W. H. Hudson: Uniform Edition. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1951.
- A Crystal Age. 1887. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1906.
- [as 'Henry Harford'] Fan – The Story of a Young Girl's Life (1892)
- El Ombú (1902):
- El Ombú and Other South American Stories: The Story of a Piebald Horse, Pelino Viera’s Confession, Niño Diablo, Marta Riquelme; and Ralph Herne. 1902 & 1923. The Collected Works of W. H. Hudson. 24 vols. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1923.
- Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904):
- Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest. 1904. Foreword by John Galsworthy. 1916. Illustrated by E. McKnight Kauffer. New York: Random House, Inc., 1944.
- Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest. 1904. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1954.
- A Little Boy Lost. Illustrated by A. D. McCormick. 1905. London: Duckworth & Co., 1920.
- Tales of the Pampas [El Ombú + 'Tecla and the Little Men'] (1916)
- Ralph Herne (1923)
- South American Romances: The Purple Land; Green Mansions; El Ombú. 1885, 1904, 1902. London: Duckworth, 1930.
- Tales of the Gauchos: Stories by W. H. Hudson. Ed. Elizabeth Coatsworth (1946)
- [with R. B. Cunninghame Graham] Gauchos of the Pampas and Their Horses. Foreword by J. Frank Dobie (1963)
- Argentine Ornithology (1888)
- The Naturalist in La Plata. Illustrated by J. Smit. 1892. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1912.
- [pamphlet] Birds in a Village. 1893. The Kings Treasuries of Literature. Ed. A. T. Quiller-Couch. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1927.
- Idle Days in Patagonia. 1893. Illustrated by Alfred Hartley and J. Smit. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / Paris: J. M. Dent et fils, 1924.
- [pamphlet] Lost British Birds (1894)
- [with a chapter by Frank Evers Beddard] British Birds (1895)
- [pamphlet] Osprey; or, Egrets and Aigrettes (1896)
- Birds in London (1898)
- Nature in Downland (1900):
- Nature in Downland and An Old Thorn. 1900 & 1920. Foreword & Wood-engravings by Eric Fitch Daglish. Open-Air Library. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1932.
- Birds and Man. 1901. Introduction by Richard Garnett. 1923. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1929.
- Hampshire Days. 1903. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
- Land's End: A Naturalist's Impressions in West Cornwall (1908)
- Afoot in England. 1909. Wood-engravings by Eric Fitch Daglish. Open-Air Library. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1936.
- A Shepherd's Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs (1910):
- The Illustrated Shepherd’s Life. 1910. Foreword by P. J. Kavanagh. London: the Bodley Head, 1987.
- Adventures Among Birds. 1913. Introduction by Richard Curle. The Works of W. H. Hudson: Uniform Edition. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1951.
- Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life. Foreword by John Galsworthy. 1918. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1925.
- Birds in Town and Village (1919)
- The Book of a Naturalist. 1919. Wood Engravings by Winifred Thridgould. A Black Jacket Book. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1939.
- Birds of La Plata (1920)
- Dead Man's Plack and An Old Thorn (1920):
- Dead Man's Plack, An Old Thorn & Poems. 1924. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1935.
- A Traveller in Little Things. 1921. Wood-engravings by Eric Fitch Daglish. The New Adelphi Library. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1932.
- [pamphlet] Tired Traveller (1921)
- [pamphlet] Seagulls In London. Why They Took To Coming To Town (1922)
- A Hind in Richmond Park. 1922. Prefatory Note by Morley Roberts. The Works of W. H. Hudson: Uniform Edition. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1951.
- Rare, Vanishing & Lost British Birds (1923)
- Mary's Little Lamb (1929)
- The Collected Works, 24 volumes (1922–23)
- Edward Garnett, ed. A Hudson Anthology. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1924.
- English Birds and Green Places: Selected Writings (1964)
- Edward Garnett, ed. 153 Letters from W. H. Hudson (1923)
- Men, Books and Birds: Letters to a Friend. With Notes, Some Letters and an Introduction by Morley Roberts. 1925. The Travellers’ Library. London: Jonathan Cape, 1928.
- W. H. Hudson's Letters to R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1941)
- David W. Dewar, ed. Letters on the Ornithology of Buenos Ayres (1951)
- Diary Concerning his Voyage from Buenos Aires to Southampton on the Ebro (1958)
- Denis Shrubsall, ed. Birds of A Feather: Unpublished Letters of W. H. Hudson (1981)
- Denis Shrubsall & Pierre Coustillas, ed. Landscapes and Literati: Unpublished Letters of W. H. Hudson and George Gissing. Salisbury, Wiltshire: Michael Russell (Publishing) Ltd., 1985.
- G. F. Wilson. Bibliography of the Writings of W. H. Hudson (1922, rev. ed 1968)
- John R. Payne. W. H. Hudson: A Bibliography (1977)
- Morley Roberts. W. H. Hudson (1924)
- Ford Madox Ford. Portraits from Life: Reminiscences. 1937. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980.
- Robert Hamilton. W. H. Hudson: The Vision of Earth. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1946.
- Richard E. Haymaker. From Pampas to Hedgerows and Downs: A Study of W. H. Hudson (1954)
- John T. Frederick. William Henry Hudson (1972)
- Denis Shrubsall. W. H. Hudson, Writer and Naturalist (1978)
- Ruth Tomalin. W. H. Hudson: A Biography. 1982. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
- Amy D. Ronner. W. H. Hudson: The Man, The Novelist, The Naturalist (1986)
- David Miller. W. H. Hudson and the Elusive Paradise (1990)
- Felipe Arocena. William Henry Hudson: Life, Literature and Science (2003)
- Jason Wilson. Living in the Sound of the Wind: A Personal Quest For W. H. Hudson, Naturalist And Writer From The River Plate (2016)
Fiction:
Non-fiction:
Miscellaneous:
Letters & Diaries:
Bibliographies:
Secondary:
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- category - Mathematics & Science: Life Sciences
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