Afoot in England was published by Hutchinson in 1909. The book collects Hudson’s experiences walking through the English countryside — primarily in the southern counties (Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somerset, Devon) — combining natural history observation with accounts of rural people, village churches, ancient monuments, and the quality of different landscapes encountered on foot.
The walking format suits Hudson perfectly: it provides narrative momentum (the journey from place to place) while allowing the discursive, observational method he excels at. Each chapter takes a different walk or a different region and explores it with Hudson’s characteristic combination of scientific attention and poetic responsiveness. He observes birds and plants with precision; he notices the architecture of farm buildings and the arrangement of villages; he talks to the people he meets and records their speech and opinions.
The book is also a social document: Hudson’s England is still pre-automobile, pre-suburb, and largely pre-modern — a country of lanes and footpaths, horse-drawn traffic, and villages that had changed little in centuries. He records this world without nostalgia (Hudson was not sentimental about rural poverty) but with the awareness that it was passing. Reading the book now, one sees the last years of an England that World War I would transform beyond recognition.
First edition (Hutchinson, London, 1909): Cloth, illustrated.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $50–$125
- Very good: $20–$50