The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp , poet W. H. Davies’ autobiography, recalls spurning a youth of subsistence and squalor in England to pursue a life of travel abroad. With quiet and understated prose, Davies recounts a tramp’s life: riding railroad boxcars and evading fare collectors, cadging free meals, working as a migrant field hand, and dealing with corrupt law enforcement and judges. Each encounter gives Davies a chance to share his observations on the state of America and England at the turn of the 20th century.

Davies’ anti-authoritarianism inspired contemporaries like George Bernard Shaw—who both lobbied for the book’s publication and provided its preface—as well as future drifters like Christopher “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless.