The Welsh Tramp Who Became a Beloved Poet

William Henry Davies was born in Newport, Wales, in 1871. His father died when he was three years old, his mother later remarried, and he was brought up by his grandparents. He stayed in school until he was 14, then trained as an apprentice to a picture framer while also attending night classes.

At 22, with a small inheritance, he sailed to New York. He did not settle there. For the next six years he moved across the United States and Canada, riding freight trains from place to place and supporting himself with casual labour and by asking strangers for money. It was the life of a tramp, with no fixed address and no steady work, and he later made it the subject of his best-known book.

In March 1899 he was hurt while trying to board a moving train. The injury was serious enough that his right leg had to be amputated below the knee. After the accident he returned to Wales and then settled in London, determined to make a living as a writer.

He published his first poetry collection, The Soul's Destroyer and Other Poems, in 1905, and in 1908 came The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, the memoir of his years on the road. Over his career he produced around twenty collections of poems and four novels, often writing about hardship, the natural world and city life. The University of Wales gave him an honorary doctorate, and a plaque at the Church House Inn in Newport honours him. His papers are held at the National Library of Wales. He died in 1940.