Westbooks
The autobiography of a super-tramp

Davies, W.H.  more...
   

Format: Paperback
Library Classification: Adult Non Fiction
BIC Subjects: Biography & autobiography: literary
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
Imprint: Melville House Publishing
Publication Date: 12/01/2012
Place of Publication: United States



 

RRP: $22.95
Available by Order
 Synopsis  Reviews  Information
A vagrant de Tocqueville gives an eloquent, dry-eyed report of his tramping adventures in the violent underworld of late 19th century America and Britain. An untutored Welsh tramp who became a popular poet acclaimed by the conservative Georgians and the vanguard Ezra Pound alike, W. H. Davies surprised his contemporaries with the unlikeliest portrait of the artist as a young man ever written. After a delinquent childhood Davies renounced home and apprenticeship and at twenty-two sailed to America--the first of more than a dozen Atlantic crossings, often made by cattle boat. From 1893 to 1899 he was schooled by the hard men of the road, disdaining regular work and subsisting by begging. Crossing Canada to join the "Klondyke" gold rush, Davies fell while hopping a train. His foot was crushed and his leg amputated. "All the wildness had been taken out of me," Davies wrote, "and my adventures after this were not of my own seeking."


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