Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life

Flynt, Josiah, 1869-1907Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
519K words
Chapters
52

Tags

English Originals Documentary Literature Humanistic CareSocial CritiqueFieldworkDocumentary NarrativeSocial Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life by Josiah FlyntAuthor: Flynt, Josiah, 1869-1907,Language: English, Class: HV: Social sciences: Social pathology, Social and Public Welfare, Release Date: Jun 18, 2012

Editor's review

This book is an early American social observer's documentary study of tramp life by Josiah Flynt, an early text in social pathology and lower-class social investigation. Through firsthand observation and character sketches, the author presents the livelihoods, slang, group rules, and living conditions of vagrants along the railroads, combining a sociological instinct for classification with a literary sense of immediacy. Its value lies not in providing systematic data in the modern sense but in preserving a vanished form of marginal life and a way of observing it; it has documentary significance for understanding late nineteenth-century American social mobility, poverty governance, and vagabond culture. It is better read as a cross between social history and documentary literature than as a rigorous modern sociological work. It suits readers interested in lower-class history, documentary writing, and social investigation methods; reading it in quiet sessions with notes at hand will be more rewarding.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and chapter titles first, choose sketches by theme, and do not force yourself to read straight through.
  2. Keep notes on people and slang, recording recurring place names and group terms as you read.
  3. Treat each sketch as an independent observational fragment and write two or three sentences of your own comparison after each chapter.
  4. If the English original is difficult, learn about late nineteenth-century American railroads and tramp life before starting the main text.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a social investigation? It is closer to a combination of social investigation and documentary sketches. The author depicts the tramp community through observation and interviews, with an intent to classify and analyze, while retaining literary scene descriptions; it is not a work of fiction.
Can I understand it without a sociology background? Yes. The book focuses on specific people and scenes and uses few theoretical terms; a basic understanding of late nineteenth-century American railroads and lower-class life is enough to get started.
Is it suitable to cite as research material? It can be used as a documentary reference for early social observation, but it should not be treated as rigorous modern statistical research; when citing it, note its period perspective and observational limits.
How difficult is the English original? The text carries late nineteenth-century vocabulary and colloquial expressions. It is not especially difficult overall, but some slang and place names require verification; reading with annotations or background materials is recommended.

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About the author

Flynt, Josiah, 1869-1907 Author

Josiah Flynt (1869–1907) was an American writer and social observer known for writing based on firsthand experience among tramps and mobile lower-class populations. Public information is limited, and few details of his life are widely circulated, but his surviving works show a lasting interest in the homeless, tramps, and itinerant policemen. His representative work Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life records the routines and rules of vagabond life in essays and sketches; My Life has an autobiographical quality; and Notes of an Itinerant Policeman presents the circumstances of street life and mobile populations from a law enforcer's perspective. His writing is documentary in emphasis, concrete in observation, and attentive to speech and survival details, offering relatively vivid on-the-ground material for understanding marginalized groups in late nineteenth-century American society. Three of his works are held in this collection.