As an autobiography, Far Away and Long Ago, like Winston Churchill's My Early Life, is limited to the author's youth. Hudson explains that upon contracting a six-week fever in old age, he discovered on the second day that memories of childhood came thronging back to him, and he wrote them down over the duration of his illness. The narrative covers his life until about age seventeen, but Hudson acknowledges that the chronology is not exact. His earliest memories begin at age four, and the book highlights ages six, ten, and fifteen, ignoring entirely the years from twelve through fourteen. He first learns to ride a pony at age six and to shoot a gun at ten. He suffers his first serious illness, typhus, at fifteen. The result of Hudson's narrative technique is a kind of loose collection of episodes.

Each chapter focuses on the author's experiences...