- ID
- c7
- Title
- "A Traveller in Little Things."
- Genre
- Essay
- Page Count
- 1
- Word Count
- 1000
- Publisher
- New Clarion
- Publication Year
- 1932
- Document Types
- Full-text Online
- Literary Criticism
Bates praises W.H. Hudson as a "master of glorious poetic prose, the weaver of that tenuous, strong, subtle web of knowledge, anecdote, colour" and contrasts his style with that of Hudson's contemporary Thomas Hardy: "heavy, ponderous, latinised, over-elaborate, over-loaded."
Despite naming Tess as one his favourite fictional characters, (John O'London's Weekly, October 6, 1934, p. 4), Bates would again critically contrast Hardy, this time against Joseph Conrad in a 1936 essay 'Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad'.
Bates would return several times to the subject of Hudson and his works, who he hailed as the "greatest of our nature-writers" in The Blossoming World (p. 28), first briefly in one of his Country Life columns for The Spectator ('Hudson and White'. July 25, 1941, p. 85), following up in more detail on the centenary of his birth in Country Life magazine (W.H. Hudson: Interpreter of the Countryside. August 8, 1941, p. 243). Finally, he would also go on to provide an introduction to the 1957 edition of Hudson's Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest.
In The New Clarion (October 15, 1932, i, 19, p. 439, attached).
