Idle Days in Patagonia

William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) was an author, naturalist, and ornithologist. He was born in Quilmes, near Buenos Aires in Argentina, the son of US 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. In 1874 he relocated to England, settling in Bayswater, London, and in 1876 married Emily Wingrave. He was a friend of the late 19th-century English author George Gissing with whom he corresponded until the latter’s death in 1903, exchanging publications and discussing literary and scientific matters. Hudson was an advocate of Lamarckian evolution, a critic of Darwinism, and defended vitalism. He was influenced by the non-Darwinian evolutionary writings of Samuel Butler, and was a founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He produced a series of ornithological studies, including Argentine Ornithology (1888) 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 ’30s. His best-known novel is Green Mansions (1904), and his most popular work of non-fiction is Far Away and Long Ago (1918) which has been adapted for film. Hudson had a special love for Patagonia and his book Idle Days in Patagonia (1893) gives an account of the year he spent there – his life’s great adventure which fulfilled not only a private dream but also a scientific mission. In this extraordinary narrative his descriptive powers harmonize perfectly with his scientific interests. Its acute observation of nature and man, and its evocation of remote places and strange peoples, mark him has a writer of great skill and distinction.