100 Books Like Far Away and Long Ago

A selection of Hudson’s letters to publisher’s reader Edward Garnett was published the year after Hudson’s death. The collection was expanded in an edition published soon after the first, and in this one Garnett added a preface in which he quoted at length from and responded to some of the criticism the first edition had brought on him.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Edmund Gosse felt that the letters didn’t show Hudson at his best, owing to the provocations of his correspondent that might be guessed at from Hudson’s responses. But Hudson was wise enough and had known his opposite number long enough to work out when he was being ‘dug out’. Sometimes, however, he was in no mood to resist rising to the bait. 

"Old Huddy is amusingly down on me in many passages," Garnett wrote to John Galsworthy, when the collection was first published. "A bit of a… show more.

I particularly enjoyed this book. Hudson’s ornithological expedition in this desolate wilderness was made partly ‘idle’ by the mishap he had when examining a faulty pistol, shooting himself in the knee.

He described his solitary confinement in a remote cabin while his sole companion went off to seek help. He shared his bed with a venomous snake, and was later ferried to hospital by bullock cart, a journey of many hours over rough terrain.

"My miserable journey ended at dawn at the Mission House. Later in the day, on awakening, I found myself in the hands of a gentleman who was a skilful surgeon as well as a divine. My bullet, however, refused to be extracted. Every morning for a fortnight my host, with a quiet smile on his lips, would present a succession of probes – oh those probes of all forms, sizes and materials: wood, ivory, steel and… show more.

In December 1903, as he was away from his London base, Hudson asked his wife Emily to send a copy of his manuscript of Green Mansions to Edward Garnett, and confided to his literary reader his misgivings about it: 

"[I] was again struck painfully by the cumbersomeness of the form. Perhaps some little alteration might be made here… the introductory chapters seem too slow: the story doesn’t move at all, it simply sits still and stews contentedly in its own juice; and it doesn’t even stew, or boil, a barbolloner, but simmers placidly away, like a saucepot of cocoa-nibs that has all the day before it. This too might be remedied to some extent. There are, I daresay, some good points in the book, especially the hero’s feeling for nature; and he being a Venezuelan some might say that it is all wrong. But of course it is a… show more.

This was another compilation of essays.

Hudson told Don Roberto Cunninghame Graham he thought it "quite as good as anything in that line I’ve done before," as he supplied one for Don Roberto's mother Missy Bontine. It was a rare example of him expressing satisfaction in anything he’d written.

When people ask me where to start with Hudson, I usually suggest starting with one of the essay books (Birds and Man or Adventures Among Birds are others). 

“For us it is a farm with a different kind of harvest,” Teale describes of how his aging Trail Woods farm yields observations, memories, and adventures. Teale has been called a “20th-century Thoreau” for his work as a naturalist, writer, and nature photographer. But in chapters titled A Hammock in the Woods, Stone Fences, The Man in the Brushpile, and more, his expression of love for living things transcends scientific observation; he shares his relationships with stones, plants, and animals so that we recognize they are made not only of earth, but of spirit, too.

This book is a fascinating look at ornithology through the ages, from mythology and legend to the evolution of our scientific understanding of birds today. It includes beautiful illustrations from medieval monks to early naturalists through the 20th century. Even the most casual birdwatcher will learn something fascinating from this book; I read it slowly, digesting a section at a time, and it’s one I’m sure I’ll return to again and again.

Modern living requires that we move, consume, absorb, and process quickly—and our bodies can’t always keep up. Thoreau’s journals transport us back to Massachusetts between 1837 and 1860, where his recordings of seeds and birds and worms, his philosophies on man and mankind, and his personal struggles against all else are set against the hush of frozen rivers, crackling fires, and ringing telegraph wires. Especially when read daily, this most prolific botanist, transcendentalist, and introvert of New England history reminds us to value the comfort of contemporary living, but never to forget the value of moving, observing, and living a slow and intentional life.

There are many books about Thoreau and Walden, even for kids. But Frederic Tudor? Who is he, and what is his relation to Thoreau? Curiosity led me to pick up this book; the scope of this little-known historical event kept me turning pages. The two characters are introduced in parallel prose poems. A pond, the third character, connects those different people.

I was entranced by the story of the naturalist and the businessman, both influenced by Walden Pond. While Thoreau wrote notes in his journal, Tudor chopped frozen blocks of ice to ship to India. The author balanced the contrasts between the men with a light hand, backdropped by the seasons. Detailed watercolor and pencil art carry the scale of the account from Thoreau’s tiny cabin to Tudor’s ship crossing the equator. This is nonfiction that transcends mere information—a masterful performance.

When I began writing about Emerson – not a usual task for a philosopher -- and was trying to figure out who the American Transcendentalists were, Barbara Packer’s brilliantly written study of the movement came to my assistance. She covers it all, from the background in European Biblical criticism and the idea that the sacred books of the world’s religious traditions are forms of poetry, to the Annus Mirabilus of 1836 when Emerson published Nature; to figures like Margaret Fuller, whose electrifying Conversations sparked a homegrown American feminism, Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May), and, of course, Emerson’s young friend, Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden and Resistance to Civil Government.

My admiration for this book is demonstrated by the way in which I quite shamelessly ripped off its title for my own. It has been said that America is the only nation that began perfect and hoped to improve. The engine of that improvement, from the earliest days of the Republic, had been new technologies but by the middle of the pre-Civil War period some Americans began to realize that the “improvement” they had unleashed was beginning to erode the very “perfection” that they had hoped to enshrine in the nation’s foundation. Writers, artists, and creative intellectuals in general are society’s canaries in the mine shaft, and the great names of the American Renaissance—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, George Innes, Charles Sheeler, and their colleagues—attempted to describe, understand, and perhaps heal the destructive effects of the machine. As Marx concludes, “what was a grim possibility… show more.