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The Purple Land
W. H. Hudson
With a new introduction by Ilan Stavans
Illustrated by Keith Henderson
“Of living writers that I have read, W. H. Hudson is the rarest spirit.”
—John Galsworthy, 1915
First published
in 1885, The Purple Land was the first novel of
William Henry Hudson, author of Green Mansions. The Anglo-Argentine
naturalist distinguished himself both as one of the finest craftsmen
of prose in English literature and as a thinker on ecological
matters far ahead of his time.
The Purple Land is the exuberant, often wryly comic, first-person account of
a young Englishman's imprudent adventures, set against a background
of political strife in nineteenth-century Uruguay. Eloping with
an Argentine girl, young Richard Lamb makes an implacable enemy
of his teenage bride's father. Leaving her behind, he goes ignorantly
forth into the interior of the country to seek his fortune and
is eventually imprisoned and persecuted by the vengeful father.
His narrative closes as he sets off on still another impetuous
quest.
This facsimile of the 1904 Three Sirens Press edition includes striking woodcuts
by Keith Henderson illustrating the characters in the novel and
the fauna of Uruguay. Ilan Stavans's introduction offers an opportunity
to revisit The Purple Land as a “road novel”
in which an outsider offers reflections on nationality and diasporic
identity.
W. H.
Hudson (1841–1922) was born in Buenos Aires to American parents.
He spent his youth in South America before emigrating to England
in 1870. His books include the acclaimed novel Green Mansions,
The Naturalist in La Plata, Idle Days in Patagonia, Adventures
among Birds, A Crystal Age, A Shepherd's Life, Far Away and Long
Ago, and A Hind in Richmond Park.
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September 2002
LC: 2001006770 PS
304 pp. 6 x 9.25
30 woodcuts
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