Wholesale Green Mansions: A Novel

Lavishly illustrated with 60 drawings by Keith Henderson, W.H. Hudson's most famous novel, Green Mansions, is the book that sparked the nature conservation movement. A master of natural history writing, W.H. Hudson forms a link between 19th-century Romanticism and the 20th-century ecological movement. First published in 1904, Green Mansions owes much of its success to the mystic, near-religious feelings that pervade the story. Hudson's halting, poetic expressions combined with his descriptions of untouched natural beauty make the novel as powerful a call back to nature today as it was more than 100 years ago. After a failed revolution, Abel is forced to seek refuge in the virgin forests of southwestern Venezuela. There, in his "green mansion," Abel meets the wood-nymph Rima, the last of a reclusive aboriginal race. The bird-girl's ethereal presence captivates him completely, but the love that blossoms is soon darkened by cruelty and sorrow.