Criptic Critic Conscience and Known for it

Sunday, July 15, 2012

The Autobiography of a Super Tramp by William H. Davies

PDF or Audio book or Digital book link

Preface by Bernard Shaw. 

I HASTEN to protest at the outset that I have no I personal knowledge of the incorrigible Super- tramp who wrote this amazing book.    If he is to be encouraged and approved, then British morality- is a mockery, British respectability an imposture, and British industry a vice.    Perhaps they are :    I have always kept an open mind on the subject; but still one may ask some better ground for pitching them
out of window than the caprice of a tramp. I hope these expressions will not excite unreason- able expectations of a thrilling realistic romance, or a scandalous chronicle, to follow.    Mr. Davies' auto- biography is not a bit sensational: it might be the Post Office Directory for the matter of that.    A less simple minded supertramp would not have thought it worth writing at all; for it mentions nothing that might not have happened to any of us.    As to scan- dal, I, though a most respectable author, have never written half so proper a book...