William Henry Hudson (1862–1918) was a professor of English Literature at Stanford University and author of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction. His best remembered work, The Famous Missions of California (1901), recounts the work of Father Junipero Serra and the twenty-one missions in California he founded. Sometimes confused with the British bird-lover naturalist and traveler, this William Henry Hudson wrote The Sphinx and Other Poems (1900), The Meaning and Value of Poetry (1901), The Strange Adventures of John Smith (1902), and The Man Napoleon (1915), among many other works.