The green mansions of the title are "that immense aerial palace hung with dim drapery of green and copper-colored leaves" to which the main character in the story, Abel Guevez de Argensola, flees as a political exile from his native Venezuela. Abel's leaving, his stay in the rain forests, his despair, regeneration and return to civilization are all elelments characteristic of an entire generation of romantic novels that appeared in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. Hudson utilized these elements and many other devices from the popular travel and adventure stories of his day-but with this significant difference, which has made Green Mansions a classic while others in the genre have been all but forgotten : Through Green Mansions breathes the life of pure, natural freedom and the freshness of young, ethereal love, inspired by the author's memories of his youth on the Argentine pampas.
