Hudson was the fourth child of Daniel Hudson (1804–1868) and his wife Caroline Augusta (1804–1859), United States settlers of English and Irish origin. His paternal grandfather was from
Clyst Hydon in Devon. He was born and lived his first years in a small
estancia called "Los Veinte-cinco
Ombues" which was on the banks of the Arroyo Conchitas stream which flows into the
Plata river in what is now Ingeniero Allan,
Florencio Varela, Argentina. In 1846, the family established at a
pulpería further south, "Las Acacias", in the surroundings of
Chascomús, not far from the lake of the same name. In this natural environment, Hudson spent his youth studying the local
flora and
fauna and observing both natural and human dramas on what was then a lawless frontier. He was taught by three tutors who lived on the ranch. He became keenly interested in the life of the pampas, and grew up with gaucho herders, native Indians, settlers with whom he explored the pampas and developed a special love for
Patagonia. At the age of 15 Hudson suffered from a serious bout of
typhus fever and still later suffered from
rheumatic fever. At 16 he read
Gilbert White's
The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne and was deeply influenced to study natural history. In 1859, his mother, a devout
Christian, died, and in the same year he read
Charles Darwin's
On the Origin of Species. From 1866, he collected bird skins for S. F. Baird at the
Smithsonian Institution but he would note later the glory of birds in life and the ugliness of taxidermy. In 1866, he also served in the Argentinian army during the war with Paraguay. He later collected insect specimens for
Hermann Burmeister in
Buenos Aires and sent bird specimens to the
Zoological Society of London from 1870. In 1870, he wrote a series of nine letters on the
ornithology of Buenos Ayres to
Philip Sclater and published by Sclater in the
Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society. In his third letter of 1870, Hudson challenged some of Darwin's statements about birds in Patagonia. Darwin noted that the woodpecker
Colaptes campestris occurred on the pampas where not a tree grew and Hudson argued that there were indeed trees on the La Plata and that in much vaster grassland areas, the woodpecker was never found. Darwin responded, accepting that he may have been mistaken in some of his observations, but that there was no wilful error and clarified the location where he had made his observations. In 1872 Hudson sent specimens of birds from Patagonia, including a species Sclater would describe and name after Hudson as
Cnipolegus hudsoni (spelling used in the paper)
. Hudson was initially sceptical about evolution but he would later be a grudging evolutionist. Hudson saw the pampas being destroyed by European immigrants and in April 1874 he boarded the steamer
Ebro for England. He slept in
Hyde Park after arrival and struggled to find employment. He met John Gould in the hope of finding work but found a cold response from Gould who was ill and the sight of dead hummingbirds all around sickened Hudson. He then sought to work as a genealogy researcher for Chester Waters who was deep in debt and unable to pay. In 1876, he married singer Emily (1829–1921) and lived in her home at Southwick Crescent (now Hyde Park Crescent), Paddington in London, where she ran a boarding house. They later moved to rented rooms and she tried to make a living by giving music lessons. They later moved to a larger three-storey house in Bayswater that Emily inherited. They lived in a flat and rented out the others which paid back their debts. They had no children. Hudson struggled to make a living through writing and among the few that he managed to write was an article in a women's magazine in 1876 that he wrote under the pseudonym Maud Merryweather. In 1880, he met
Morley Roberts and through his connections he was able to contribute stories to magazines. He wrote several books including a two-volume work on
Argentine Ornithology (1888),
Idle Days in Patagonia (1893), and
The Naturalist in La Plata (1892). He began to travel in England and wrote
Nature in Downland (1900). His books on the English countryside, some of them set in the southern counties of
Hampshire and
Wiltshire, included
Hampshire Days (1903),
Afoot in England (1909), and ''A Shepherd's Life'' (1910), which helped foster the back-to-nature movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Hudson was a supporter of the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) from its early days and was often the only man who sat in the meetings organized by Eliza Phillips. He later wrote some pamphlets for the organisation in 1898 against the trade in plumes. Hudson became a British citizen in 1900 and in 1901 he received a Civil list pension of £150 per year for his writings on natural history. This was made possible by the influence of Sir
Edward and his wife Lady Dorothy Grey. Hudson was over six feet tall. He loved to talk to people from rural working classes and would live among them during his travels in the countryside. He was a friend of the late-19th century English author
George Gissing, whom he met in 1889. They corresponded until the latter's death in 1903, occasionally exchanging their publications, discussing literary and scientific matters, and commenting on their respective access to books and newspapers, a matter of supreme importance to Gissing. In September 1890,
Morley Roberts, Gissing and Hudson were at
Shoreham where they were involved in rescuing three drowning girls even though Hudson could not swim. Other close friends included
Cunninghame Graham. Hudson campaigned in 1900 against the building of the
National Physical Laboratory in the grounds of
Kew Gardens. Hudson began to write fiction, his most popular work being
Green Mansions (1904), which was set in a Venezuelan forest. In 1959 it was made into a movie. Other works of fiction included
The Purple Land (1904),
A Crystal Age (1906),
Tales of the Pampas (1916), and
A Little Boy Lost (1905). He wrote an autobiographical book,
Far Away and Long Ago (1918). In 1911, his wife became an invalid and she was taken care of by nurse in
Worthing, Sussex, until her death early in 1921. Hudson lived in London with a weak heart and died on 18 August 1922, at 40 St Luke’s Road,
Westbourne Park, Bayswater, and was buried in Broadwater and Worthing Cemetery,
Worthing, on 22 August 1922, next to his wife, who had died the previous year. He left some bequests but nearly his entire estate of £8,225 was left to the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (including earnings from his works) of which he was an early member. ==Personal views==