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A Life of W.H. Davies
‘What is this life if, full of care, / We have no time
to stand and stare?’
W.H. Davies is best known today for his popular poem
‘Leisure’. But this elegant homage to the quiet
life stands in stark contrast to the picaresque story of its
author.
Jobless, penniless and homeless for the majority of the first
half of his life, Davies roamed the streets from the Welsh
docklands to Canada - losing his leg freeriding a train
in Ottawa along the way.
At forty he wrote his life story, which made him famous.
Befriended by Shaw, Conrad and other influential literary
figures, the former hobo suddenly found himself at the centre
of literary life. Eventually retiring to the Cotswolds with
his wife (an ex-prostitute half his age), Davies died in
1940 leaving his estate to a man he had never met.
In Time to Stand and Stare Barbara Hooper tells the
extraordinary story of the man who called himself the Super-Tramp.
Includes a selection of Davies’ poems, currently unavailable
anywhere else
• The most up-to-date biography in print
• Written with the co-operation of W.H. Davies’s
estate
• Draws on brand-new material including unpublished photographs
• ‘Leisure’ is currently used in a television
advertising campaign and as inspiration for a medal-winning
garden at the Chelsea Flower Show
‘Davies was indeed a phenomenon . . . a clear and fair
[book].’ - P.J. Kavanagh, Spectator
‘Careful and interesting . . . his writings give a taste
of a wilder, lower life.’ - Tablet
‘The most up-to-date biography in print of this enthralling
individual’ — Western Mail
‘This concise new biography is particularly insightful
. . . [Hooper] presents her subject a a writer who should
be judged on a vast canon of pastoral and lyric poetry’ - Western
Daily Press
‘A remarkable talent . . . he never lost the power
to refresh the commonest experience.’ - Philip Larkin
on W.H. Davies
BARBARA HOOPER is a journalist, lecturer and writer of
Cider with Laurie: Laurie Lee Remembered (‘An
excellent companion to Lee’ - Daily Mail) |
