W. H. Hudson is remembered almost exclusively for the novel Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904), which became his first substantial financial success after a writing career of more than four decades. Hudson, however, was much more than a romance writer. His best writing, in fact, combined the nature essay with the travel essay, resulting in works that have made him an apt successor to Henry David Thoreau, whom he admired. In addition to essays and romances Hudson produced short stories and a nostalgic account of his early years in the Argentine pampas, an account still considered an especially fine work of autobiography.

The fourth child and third son of New England parents who had immigrated to South America, William Henry Hudson was born on 4 August 1841 ten miles from Buenos Aires at Quilmes, in the La Plata region of the Argentine pampas. He spent the first...