W.H. Hudson

Evocacion entrañable de la infancia del autor en la pampa argentina. Uno de los libros mas admirados de Hudson, que desgrana los recuerdos magicos de su contacto directo con la naturaleza. Alicia Jurado ofrece una nueva traduccion mas ajustada al original ingles.

Durante una excursión botánica, el joven Smith se sienta a descansar al borde de un barranco y, de pronto, el suelo cede y él se precipita en el vacío. Al recobrar la conciencia, se descubre en una tierra habitada por una exótica sociedad de pequeñas comunidades matriarcales, que viven en plena armonía con la naturaleza y desconocen completamente el mundo del que Smith proviene. W.H Hudson se sirve del viaje en el tiempo y la utopía para construir una intensa novela repelta de ironía, un sutil erotismo, belleza y denuncia que dibuja un mundo que ha superado las diversas formas de locura nacidas en la sociedad industrial. 

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. The Americas, Stavans, series editor; with a new introduction by Ilan Stavans

La tierra purpúreade los muy pocos libros felices que hay en la tierra, en palabras de Borges—narra el vagabundeo forzoso de un inglés por la convulsa Banda Oriental (el actual Uruguay) y su esperado

A Shepherds Life: Impressions of the South Wiltshire Downs is Hudsons deeply textured portrait of a shepherding community centered on the figure of Caleb Bawcombe, rendered through episodic scenes of work, festivity, and hardship across the seasons. Combining oral biography with natural history, Hudsons prose is limpid yet exact, attentive to chalkland light, birdsong, and the craft of dogs and men. Set on the Salisbury Plain at the edge of Edwardian change, the book extends the English pastoral from Jefferies and Hardy into an ethnography of a vanishing economy. Born on the Argentine pampas, Hudson brought to England a lifelong habit of watchful wandering and an outsiders sympathy for open country. A self-taught ornithologist and celebrated nature writer, he tramped the Wiltshire downs gathering life histories from shepherds, sedimenting memory with field observation. Alarmed by enclosure, militarization, and mechanization, he shaped these interviews into a conserving art, preserving dialect, custom, and ecological knowledge before modernization effaced them. This book rewards readers of nature writing, social historians, and ecocritical scholars alike. Read it for its patient craft and humane intelligence: a luminous record of pre-mechanized husbandry and a masterclass in listening to place as carefully as to people.Quickie Classics summarizes timeless works with precision, preserving the authors voice and keeping the prose clear, fast, and readabledistilled, never diluted. Enriched Edition extras: Introduction · Synopsis · Historical Context · Brief Analysis · 4 Reflection Q&As · Editorial Footnotes.

La tierra purpúrea es una novela de aventuras publicada en 1885 por W. H. Hudson. Ambientada en el Uruguay del siglo XIX, narra la historia de Richard Lamb, un joven inglés que huye a Sudamérica tras un matrimonio impulsivo. Separado de su esposa, inicia un viaje por el campo uruguayo en medio de conflictos civiles y tensiones politicas. Durante su travesia, Lamb convive con gauchos, soldados y habitantes rurales, descubriendo una cultura apasionada y libre que contrasta con la rigidez inglesa. Mas que una simple aventura, la novela es un proceso de transformacion interior: el protagonista aprende a adaptarse, a comprender el espiritu del lugar y a liberarse de prejuicios europeos. Hudson combina paisajes vividos, reflexion filosofica y episodios romanticos, ofreciendo un retrato intenso de la naturaleza y la identidad rioplatense. La obra celebra la libertad individual y el contacto con la tierra como formas de renovacion espiritual. Considerada una novela de iniciacion, La tierra purpurea es tambien una meditacion sobre pertenencia, cultura y la tension entre civilizacion y naturaleza.