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Tritt ein in eine Welt voller Geschichten

Hören und Lesen

Ladies’ man. Child soldier. Civil War hero. Egotist. Tramp. Drunkard. Roving Bill Aspinwall: Dispatches from a Hobo in Post-Civil War America tells the story of an American hobo entirely in his own words.

Feral House

Tramp Lit Series

Roving Bill Aspinwall: Dispatches from a Hobo in Post-Civil War America

Kathleen Phelan

Kathleen Phelan (nee Newton) was utterly unique; a female vagabond who embraced the freedom of the tramp lifestyle and philosophy. Like the infamous women explorers of the Victorian era, she traveled before as a single woman adventuring to every place on the planet funding her travels through canny bets on horseracing. 
At age 26 in 1944, she met and married author and fellow tramp, Jim Phelan who introduced her to his literary circle. She tramped another 40+ years after he passed roaming from continent to continent, staying with Picasso in Spain, playing football with Pele in Brazil, and even telling her stories to the Shah of Iran. Her magnetism attracted friends all over the world with whom she corresponded and kept entertained with lively letters.

We meet Kathleen here in her never before published memoir of her travels with husband Jim and her return to the road after his passing in 1966. 

Also included are personal correspondence and magazine articles written by Kathleen while on the road. Her nephew Liam Phelan, a senior journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, writes a moving and personal introduction.

There is Only One Road and it Goes Everywhere: Journeys to the Land of Heart's Desires

Bart Kennedy

Bart Kennedy, the British “tramp” who captivated readers in the early 20th century with his tales of itinerant adventures, wrote over twenty books chronicling the details of these travels. A Tramp’s Philosophy was published in 1908, and is a compendium of reflections, musings, and occasionally harsh commentary on the state of the world at that time. Mr. Kennedy’s experiences as an “anti-labor traveller” give an unusual perspective of the politics and social concerns of the 1900s. Feral House is delighted to make available this most rare and sought-after of Bart Kennedy’s works.

A Tramp's Philosophy: The Rediscovered Classic of Sagacious Twaddle, and Occasional Insight by One with Erudition and Experience in Peregrination

Ian Cutler

First collective biography of tramp writers from the late 19th to early 20th century.
Many of the writing excerpts have never been published.

The Lives and Extraordinary Adventures of Fifteen Tramp Writers from the Golden Age of Vagabondage

Jim Christy

What is it about the desolate far North American wilderness that calls the intrepid traveler to uncover its sanctifying and deadly secrets? From Jack London (Call of the Wild) to Christopher McCandless (chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild) souls have found solace in the silent, frozen northern kingdom at the top of the world, the Ultima Thule.
 The forested flatlands give way to the frozen Rocky Mountains over millions of acres nominally in the dominion of both the United States and Canada and accessible by its 1532 mile shared umbilical cord—The Alcan Highway. Legendary vagabond, Jim Christy, a Canadian now but born an American travels this road throughout his life. First as a young man in the early 1960s hungry for rugged adventure then revisiting the journey every few years both observing and reflecting on the growth of Northwest in the Rough Road to the North.
 Christy vividly describes the history of the indigenous people and the hearty (and often foolhardy) pioneers who built the Alcan highway and opened the northern road. Christy’s lyrical text weaves fulsome magic about the siren call of the last unconquered land of North America.

 

The forested flatlands give way to the frozen Rocky Mountains over millions of acres nominally in the dominion of both the United States and Canada and accessible by its 1532 mile shared umbilical cord—The Alcan Highway. Legendary vagabond, Jim Christy, a Canadian now but born an American travels this road throughout his life. First as a young man in the early 1960s hungry for rugged adventure then revisiting the journey every few years both observing and reflecting on the growth of Northwest in the Rough Road to the North.

Rough Road to the North: A Vagabond on the Great Northern Highway

Jim Christy’s life and adventures began on the mobbed-up streets of South Philadelphia. Over his 73 years to date, Christy has asserted his freedom of spirit as a vagabond adventurer, latter-day hobo, journalist, private eye, actor, musician, and artist, in over 50 countries around the globe, and still found time to write over 30 books. His early adventures as a street fighter and child tramp provide a unique socio-cultural history of Philadelphia in the 50’s and 60’s before the book moves on to recount his later exploits from some of the most remote and random corners of the world.