"A SIMPLE ROMANTIC NARRATIVE TRANSMUTED BY SHEER GLOW OF BEAUTY INTO A PROSE POEM"

HUDSON, W. H. Green Mansions. London: Duckworth, 1904. Thick octavo, original olive cloth gilt. Housed in custom chemise and half morocco slipcase. $800.

First edition of Hudson's "romance of the tropical forest," an excellent copy in the original cloth.

"Of all living authors—now that Tolstoy has gone—I could least dispense with W.H. Hudson. Why do I love his writing so? I think because he is, of living writers that I read, the rarest spirit, and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the nature of that spirit… Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare, free, natural world, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by going there" (John Galsworthy). "Hudson forms an important link between 19th-century Romanticism and the 20th-century ecological movement. Green Mansions is a poignant meditation on the loss of wilderness, the dream of a return to nature, and the bitter reality of the encounter between savage and civilized man" (Ian Duncan). In second-issue binding, with the publisher's device on the rear board.

A bit of foxing to endpapers only. Cloth fresh, gilt bright. A lovely, very nearly fine copy.