The Purple Land That England Lost was published by Sampson Low, Marston in 1885 (later editions shorten the title to The Purple Land). It was Hudson’s first book of fiction, written after a decade of struggle in London following his emigration from Argentina in 1874. The novel draws on his South American knowledge to create a picaresque romance set in the Banda Oriental (Uruguay) during the civil wars of the mid-nineteenth century.
Richard Doyle, a young Englishman married to a Uruguayan woman, travels through the country and becomes involved in revolution, encounters bandits and beautiful women, fights alongside guerrilla bands, and experiences the freedom and violence of a society in flux. The narrative structure is loose — a sequence of adventures rather than a tightly plotted story — and the book’s pleasure lies in its episodes rather than its arc.
Hudson admitted the book was immature, but it attracted admirers including Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. It anticipates Hudson’s mature themes: the superiority of the natural and primitive over the civilized, the rapture of physical freedom, and the beauty of landscape as a spiritual force. The Uruguay it describes — a country of horsemen, open grasslands, and political turbulence — is a version of the Argentine pampas Hudson had left behind.
Collecting The Purple Land
First edition (Sampson Low, London, 1885): Two volumes, cloth.
Market values:
- First edition, two volumes, fine: $1,000–$3,000 (very scarce)
- Good: $300–$800
- Later single-volume editions (Duckworth, 1904): $50–$150