Other editions of book Purple Land

The novel tells the story of Richard Lamb, a young Englishman who marries a teenage Argentinian girl, Paquita, without asking her father's permission, and is forced to flee to Montevideo, Uruguay with his bride. Lamb leaves his young wife with a relative while he sets off for eastern Uruguay to find work for himself. He soon becomes embroiled in adventures with the Uruguayan gauchos and romances with local women. Lamb unknowingly helps a rebel guerrilla general, Santa Coloma, escape from prison and joins his cause. However, the rebels are defeated in battle and Lamb has to flee in disguise. He helps Demetria, the daughter of an old rebel leader, escape from her persecutors and returns to Montevideo. Lamb, Paquita, Demetria and Santa Coloma evade their government pursuers by slipping away on a boat bound for Buenos Aires. Here the novel ends, but in the opening paragraphs, Lamb had already informed the reader that after the events of the story he was captured by Paquita's father and thrown into prison for three years, during which time Paquita herself died of grief. Ernest Hemingway famously referred to Hudson's book in his novel The Sun Also Rises: Then there was another thing. He had been reading W.H. Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had read and reread The Purple Land. The Purple Land is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described. For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books.

The Purple Land tells the story of Richard Lamb, a young Englishman who marries a teenage Argentinian girl, Paquita, without asking her father's permission, and is forced to flee to Montevideo, Uruguay with his bride. Lamb leaves his young wife with a relative while he sets off for eastern Uruguay to find work for himself. He soon becomes embroiled in adventures with the Uruguayan gauchos and romances with local women. Lamb unknowingly helps a rebel guerrilla general, Santa Coloma, escape from prison and joins his cause. However, the rebels are defeated in battle and Lamb has to flee in disguise. He helps Demetria, the daughter of an old rebel leader, escape from her persecutors and returns to Montevideo. Lamb, Paquita, Demetria and Santa Coloma evade their government pursuers by slipping away on a boat bound for Buenos Aires. Here the novel ends, but in the opening paragraphs, Lamb had already informed the reader that after the events of the story he was captured by Paquita's father and thrown into prison for three years, during which time Paquita herself died of grief. Ernest Hemingway famously referred to Hudson's book in his novel The Sun Also Rises: Then there was another thing. He had been reading W.H. Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Cohn had read and reread The Purple Land. The Purple Land is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described. For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books. Green Mansions, novel by W.H. Hudson, published in 1904. An exotic romance set in the jungles of South America, the story is narrated by a man named Abel who as a young man had lived among the aboriginal people. He tells of Rima, a strange birdlike woman with whom he falls in love. A creature of the forest, Rima is eventually destroyed by the superstitious Aboriginals.

The Purple Land is a novel set in 19th century Uruguay by William Henry Hudson, first published in 1885 under the title The Purple Land that England Lost. Initially a commercial and critical failure, it was reissued in 1904 with the full title The Purple Land, Being One Richard Lamb's Adventures in the Banda Orientál, in South America, as told by Himself. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator explains the title, "I will call my book The Purple Land. For what more suitable name can one find for a country so stained with the blood of her children?"

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William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) was an author, naturalist and ornithologist. He was born in the Quilmes Partido in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, where he is considered to belong to the national literature as Guillermo Enrique Hudson, the Spanish version of his name. He spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna and observing both natural and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier, publishing his ornithological work in Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society, initially in an English mingled with Spanish idioms. He settled in England during 1869. He produced a series of ornithological studies, including Argentine Ornithology (1888-1899) and British Birds (1895), and later achieved fame with his books on the English countryside, including Hampshire Days (1903), Afoot in England (1909) and A Shepherd's Life (1910). His best known novel is Green Mansions (1904), and his best known non-fiction is Far Away and Long Ago (1918). His other works include: The Purple Land (That England Lost) (1885), A Crystal Age (1887), The Naturalist in La Plata (1892), A Little Boy Lost (1905), Birds in Town and Village (1919), Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn (1920), and A Traveller in Little Things (1921).

Excerpt: ...and more powerful song than the English bird. On the other side of the hedge was the potrero, or paddock, where a milch-cow with two or three horses were kept. The manservant, whose name was Nepomucino, presided over orchard and paddock, also to some extent over the entire establishment. Nepomucino was a pure negro, a little old round-headed, blear-eyed man, about five feet four in height, the short lumpy wool on his head quite grey; slow in speech and movements, his old black or chocolate-coloured fingers all crooked, stiff-jointed, and pointing spontaneously in different directions. I have never seen anything in the human subject to equal the dignity of Nepomucino, the profound gravity of his bearing and expression forcibly reminding one of an owl. Apparently he had come to look upon himself as the sole head and master of the establishment, and the sense of responsibility had more than steadied him. The negrine propensity to frequent explosions of inconsequent laughter was not, of course, to be expected in such a sober-minded person; but he was, I think, a little too sedate for a black, for, although his face would shine on warm days like polished ebony, it did not smile. Everyone in the house conspired to keep up the fiction of Nepomucino's importance; they had, in fact, conspired so long and so well, that it had very nearly ceased to be a fiction. Everybody addressed him with grave respect. Not a syllable of his long name was ever omitted-what the consequences of calling him Nepo, or Cino, or Cinito, the affectionate diminutive, would have been I am unable to say, since I never had the courage to try the experiment. It often amused me to hear Dona Mercedes calling to him from the house, and throwing the whole emphasis on the last syllable in a long, piercing crescendo: "Ne-po-mu-ci-no-o." Sometimes, when I sat in the orchard, he would come, and, placing himself before me, discourse gravely about things in general, clipping his words...

First published in 1885, “The Purple Land” is a novel by Argentinian naturalist and author William Henry Hudson. It tells the story of a young Englishman called Richard Lamb who elopes with a teenage Argentinian girl to Uruguay. Once there, Lamb sets off to find work, but instead finds himself at the centre of an epic adventure. This exciting and beautifully-written page-turner is not to be missed by fans and collectors of Hudson's wonderful work, and it would make for a worthy addition to any collection. William Henry Hudson (1841 – 1922) was an Argentinian naturalist, author, and ornithologist. He was one of the founding members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and is best known for his novel “Green Mansions” (1904). Other notable works include “A Crystal Age” (1887) and “Far Away and Long Ago” (1918), which has since been adapted into a film. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Cfte purple LanD PREFACE (HIS work was first issued in 1885, by Messrs. Sampson Low, in two slim volumes, with the longer, and to most persons, enigmatical title of The Purple Land That England Lost. A purple land may be found in almost any region of the globe, and tis of our gains, not our losses, we keep count. A few notices of the book appeared in the papers, one or two of the more serious literary journals reviewing it (not favourably) under the heading of Travels and Geography ;but the reading public cared not to buy, and it very shortly fell into oblivion. There it might have remained for a further period of nineteen years, or for ever, since the sleep of a book is apt to be of the unawakening kind, had not certain men of letters, who found it on a forgotten heap and liked it in spite of its faults, or because of them, concerned themselves to revive it. We are often told that an author never wholly loses his affection for a first book, and the feeling has been likened (more than once) to that of a parent towards a first-born. I have not said it, but in consenting to this reprint I considered that a writers early or unregarded work is apt to be raked up when he is not standing by to make remarks. He may be absent on a journey from which he is not expected to return. It accordingly seemed better that I should myself supervise a new edition, since this would enable me to remove a few of the numerous spots and pimples which decorate the ingenious countenance of the work before handing it on to posterity. Besides many small verbal corrections and changes, the deletion of some paragraphs and the insertion of a few new ones, I have omitted one entire chapter containing the Story of a Piebald Horse, recently reprinted in another book entitled El Ombu.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writin