{"title":"Owen Clayton","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"roving-bill-aspinwall-book-owen-clayton-9781627311229","title":"Roving Bill Aspinwall","description":"\u003cb\u003eLadies' man. Child soldier. Civil War hero. Egotist. Tramp. Drunkard. Published author. \u003ci\u003eRoving Bill Aspinwall: Dispatches from a Hobo in Post-Civil War America\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of an American hobo entirely in his own words.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eWilliam 'Roving Bill' Aspinwall was all of these things and yet no lone descriptor does him justice. Born one of 23 siblings, married 5 times, wounded fighting for the Union in one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War, kicked out of numerous jobs and soldiers' homes for drunkenness, and having spent decades wandering as a penniless vagabond, Bill also kept up a 24-year correspondence with John James McCook, Professor of Modern Languages at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. In so doing Bill provided the earliest and best account of life on the road by an American hobo.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Written between 1893 and 1917, \u003ci\u003eRoving Bill Aspinwall: Dispatches from a Hobo in Post-Civil War America\u003c\/i\u003e tells Bill's story entirely in his own words. Describing experiences on the road, the people he meets, his dalliances with women and his memories of the Civil War, the letters are a rich and unique correspondence. Having been physically and mentally scarred at the 1863 Battle of Champion Hill, Bill details his lifelong battle with booze. He also gives first-hand accounts of men thrown out of work during the economic Panic of 1893, of wandering around the country as an itinerant umbrella-mender, of working in factories, farms and even a circus, as well as his visit to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1903. Bill's words are the real voice of a nineteenth-century hobo.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49741930922257,"sku":"NGR9781627311229","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50395918237969,"sku":"CIN162731122XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51040597180689,"sku":"NIN9781627311229","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51533691945233,"sku":"GOR013790230","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/162731122X.jpg?v=1751182368"},{"product_id":"vagabonds-tramps-and-hobos-book-owen-clayton-9781009348034","title":"Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos","description":"The most enduring version of the hobo that has come down from the so-called 'Golden Age of Tramping' (1890s to 1940s) is an American cultural icon, signifying freedom from restraint and rebellion to the established order while reinforcing conservative messages about American exceptionalism, individualism, race, and gender. Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos shows that this 'pioneer hobo' image is a misrepresentation by looking at works created by transient artists and thinkers, including travel literature, fiction, memoir, early feminist writing, poetry, sociology, political journalism, satire, and music. This book explores the diversity of meanings that accrue around 'the hobo' and 'the tramp'. It is the first analysis to frame transiency within a nineteenth-century literary tradition of the vagabond, a figure who attempts to travel without money. This book provide new ways for scholars to think about the activity and representation of US transiency.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51012368204049,"sku":"NIN9781009348034","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1009348035.jpg?v=1751109827"},{"product_id":"vagabonds-tramps-and-hobos-book-owen-clayton-9781009348089","title":"Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos","description":"The most enduring version of the hobo that has come down from the so-called 'Golden Age of Tramping' (1890s to 1940s) is an American cultural icon, signifying freedom from restraint and rebellion to the established order while reinforcing conservative messages about American exceptionalism, individualism, race, and gender. 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