The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp
W. H. Davies (1871–1940), 1908
★ 3.81 from 713 ratings on Goodreads
A Welsh poet's account of riding freight trains, begging, and sleeping rough across America and England—funny, precise, and unsentimental about hunger. The voice is plain and exact, with a poet's eye for weather and strangers, and the pace moves like a freight train between dry humor and hard luck.
Feels like wonder and humor. About adventure and power.
Who it’s for
You may like this if you enjoy travel memoirs told by a sharp, unpretentious observer who can find humor in a poor meal and a cold field. Its episodic tramping can feel repetitive, and the hunger and rough sleeping are described without softening.
Why read it
It shows how curiosity and a poet's precision can survive hunger and rootlessness, giving you a clear-eyed view of early twentieth-century life on the road.
Pages from the book
What a man thinks about when he believes he is about to die.
And yet I felt no terror of death. I had been taken in a sleigh from the station to the hospital, over a mile or more of snow; and the one thought that worried me most, when I was supposed to be face to face with death, was whether the town lay north, south, east or west from the hospital, and this, I believe, was the last question I asked. After hearing an answer, I drew in the chloroform in long breaths, thinking to assist the doctors in their work. In spite of this, I have a faint recollection of struggling with all my might against its effects, previous to losing consciousness; but I was greatly surprised on being afterwards told that I had, when in that condition, used more foul language in ten minutes’ delirium than had probably been used in twenty-four hours by the whole population of Canada. The man who is wonderful company until the door closes.
Bob was full of the wonders of Nature, marvelled much at the undertakings of men, to make railways to cross mountains and bridges to span canyons; and was deeply interested in the early growth of things, ere they were manufactured into a form that every person could recognise. He was a most brilliant conversationalist, and was interestingly dramatic in his readings. He was a good companion for others, but, as I soon discovered to my disappointment, seldom had a comfortable moment when alone with himself. I had a small bedroom to myself, and unfortunately the near cubicle to mine was Bob’s. What a summer looks like to people who own nothing.
I shall never forget the happy summer months I spent with Brum at the seaside. Some of the rich merchants there could not spare more than a month or six weeks from business, but, thanks be to Providence, the whole summer was at our disposal. If we grew tired of one town or, as more often the case, the town grew tired of us, we would saunter leisurely to the next one and again pitch our camp; so on, from place to place, during the summer months. We moved freely among the visitors, who apparently held us in great respect, for they did not address us familiarly, but contented themselves with staring at a distance. W. H. Davies.George Bernard Shaw admired the manuscript and wrote a preface for it, helping a one-legged Welsh tramp poet reach a wide readership.
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp for me?
- You may like this if you enjoy travel memoirs told by a sharp, unpretentious observer who can find humor in a poor meal and a cold field. Its episodic tramping can feel repetitive, and the hunger and rough sleeping are described without softening.
- What is The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp like?
- The voice is plain and exact, with a poet's eye for weather and strangers, and the pace moves like a freight train between dry humor and hard luck. Feels like wonder and humor. About adventure and power.
- What should I read after The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp?
- If you liked The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, try A Negro Explorer at the North Pole (Matthew Henson), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum) and The Voyage of the Beagle (Charles Darwin).
A taste of the feed
How does an entire civilization exist through a filter of green glass?
Even with eyes protected by the green spectacles, Dorothy and her friends were at first dazzled by the brilliancy of the wonderful City. The streets were lined with beautiful houses all built of green marble and studded everywhere with sparkling emeralds. They walked over a pavement of the same green marble, and where the blocks were joined together were rows of emeralds, set closely, and glittering in the brightness of the sun. The window panes were of green glass; even the sky above the City had a green tint, and the rays of the sun were green.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · L. Frank Baum
The night the ocean itself began to give off light.
While sailing a little south of the Plata on one very dark night, the sea presented a wonderful and most beautiful spectacle. There was a fresh breeze, and every part of the surface, which during the day is seen as foam, now glowed with a pale light. The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phosphorus, and in her wake she was followed by a milky train. As far as the eye reached, the crest of every wave was bright, and the sky above the horizon, from the reflected glare of these livid flames, was not so utterly obscure as over the vault of the heavens.
The Voyage of the Beagle · Charles Darwin
The cost, in someone else's bread, of a life of the mind.
But what right had I to these highest joys, when all around me was nothing but misery and struggle for a mouldy bit of bread; when whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live in that world of higher emotions must needs be taken from the very mouths of those who grew the wheat and had not bread enough for their children? From somebody’s mouth it must be taken, because the aggregate production of mankind remains still so low.
Memoirs of a Revolutionist · Peter Kropotkin
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