The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp(1908) by:W. H. Davies - Softcover

Davies, W. H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1530637066 ISBN 13: 9781530637065

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

This is an autobiography that describes what it was like to be a tramp in the late 19th century in North America. From the preface: "I HASTEN to protest at the outset that I have no personal knowledge of the incorrigible Super-tramp who wrote this amazing book. If he is to be encouraged and approved, then British morality is a mockery, British respectability an imposture, and British industry a vice. Perhaps they are: I have always kept an open mind on the subject; but still one may ask some better ground for pitching them out of window than the caprice of a tramp. I hope these expressions will not excite unreasonable expectations of a thrilling realistic romance, or a scandalous chronicle, to follow. Mr. Davies’ autobiography is not a bit sensational: it might be the Post Office Directory for the matter of that. A less simple minded supertramp would not have thought it worth writing at all; for it mentions nothing that might not have happened to any of us. As to scandal, I, though a most respectable author, have never written half so proper a book.

About this title

About the Author:

W. H. Davies (1871-1940) was a renowned Welsh poet, most famous for his poem Leisure (1911). He published his first book, The Soul's Destroyer and Other Poems in March 1905. He wrote few works of prose; Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) is his most famous. He married in 1923 and his last place of residence was Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. In 1926 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Wales. In 1938 a plaque in his honour was unveiled in Newport.

Review:

“Davies and Kerouac are so similar it’s like they have had the same illness. !ey kept searching, longing, moving. . . !ey are mesmerising narrators. . . [Davies’s] story has the tension and suspense of a man whose life and soul is in jeopardy.”

The Times (London)

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1530637066
• ISBN 13: 9781530637065
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 130