Book cover of Autobiography of a Super-Tramp

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Autobiography of a Super-Tramp as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

With a title good enough to inspire the naming of a famous British band, Welsh poet Davies’ 1908 love letter to tramps and hobos drew directly from his own experience as a drifter in the US in the late nineteenth century.

Davies captures the life of jumping freight trains, joining the gold rush, and paying “boodle” to stay in the relative comfort of American jails. I love this book because it depicts the romanticism of the wandering mendicant without painting over the cracks of the hardships of roofless life (including parting company with one of his legs under a train).

From Neil's list on unheard voice of homelessness.

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