- ID
- c166
- Title
- "Introduction" [to Green Mansions, by W.H. Hudson]
- Genre
- Essay
- Page Count
- 6
- Word Count
- 2500
- Publication Year
- 1957
- Document Types
- Full-text Online
- Literary Criticism
- Introductions, Forewards & Prefaces
One of several opportunities taken by Bates to praise Hudson's writing, joining the 1932 essay "A Traveller in Little Things" and a mention of Hudson as the "greatest of our nature-writers" in The Blossoming World (p. 28).
Bates describes a style that is "almost biblically simple, sensitive, fastidious, visual, captivating," and a "person of the strongest visionary instincts, of the most powerful poetic sensibility." He analyses the pace of the novel, and the challenges Hudson may have experienced with his half-bird, half-woman character. In doing so, Bates reveals some of his own priorities as a writer regarding atmosphere, character creation, and style.
He had also previously written about Hudson briefly in one of his Country Life columns for The Spectator ('Hudson and White'. July 25, 1941, p. 85), and in a more extensive piece on the centenary of his birth in Country Life magazine (W.H. Hudson: Interpreter of the Countryside. August 8, 1941, p. 243).
In Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (W.H. Hudson; London: Collins, 1957, pp. 11-16, attached)
