Life and Work
Hudson was born in the Quilmes, a borough (partido) of the greater Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, the son of Daniel Hudson and his wife Catherine née Kemble, U.S. settlers of English and Irish origin. 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 mingled with Spanish idioms.
Hudson settled in England during 1874. 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 Day (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 founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Hudson's best known novel is Green Mansions (1904), and his best known non-fiction is Far Away and Long Ago (1918). Ernest Hemingway famously referred to Hudson's book The Purple Land in his novel The Sun Also Rises.
In Argentina, Hudson is considered to belong to the national literature as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, the Spanish version 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, Hudson moved to Worthing in Sussex, England. His grave is in Broadwater and Worthing Cemetery in Worthing.
Read more about this topic: William Henry Hudson
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