The Neversink Library champions books from around the world that have been overlooked, under appreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored. What its about: The autobiography of poet W.H.Davies before he became famous. Praised by Osbert Sitwell for his “primitive splendour and directness,” Davies evokes the beauty and frontier violence of turn-of-the-century America in prose that George Bernard Shaw commended to “literary experts for its style alone.” The insurgent wanderlust that found an American voice in Jack London and Jack Kerouac is expressed here in a raucous true adventure story by the man Shaw called “the incorrigible Supertramp who wrote this amazing book.” “All the wildness had been taken out of me,” Davies wrote, “and my adventures after this were not of my own seeking.” His foot was crushed and his leg amputated. His father died when he was three years old, and after his mother’s subsequent remarriage, Davies was raised by his grandparents. Crossing Canada to join the “Klondyke” gold rush, Davies fell while hopping a train. Poet and writer William Henry Davies was born in Newport, Wales. From 1893 to 1899 he was schooled by the hard men of the road, disdaining regular work and subsisting by begging. Davies surprised his contemporaries with the unlikeliest portrait of the artist as a young man ever written.Īfter 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. An untutored Welsh tramp who became a popular poet acclaimed by the conservative Georgians and the vanguard Ezra Pound alike, W.
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