W H Hudson

Far Away and Long Ago W H Hudson

William Henry Hudson (4 August 1841 - 18 August 1922) was an author, naturalist, and ornithologist. Hudson was born in Quilmes, near Buenos Aires, Argentina.[a] He was the son of Daniel Hudson and his wife Catherine née Kemble, United States 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. He had a special love of Patagonia. Hudson settled in England during 1874, taking up residence at St Luke's Road in Bayswater. 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. It was set in Wiltshire and inspired James Rebanks' 2015 book The Shepherd's Life about a Lake District farmer. Hudson was an advocate of Lamarckian evolution. He was a critic of Darwinism and defended vitalism. He was influenced by the non-Darwinian evolutionary writings of Samuel Butler. He was a founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds