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William Henry Davies, poet and writer, was born in Newport, Monmouthshire. His father died when Davies was three, and, following his mother's remarriage, the children were adopted by their grandparents. Davies was educated at schools in Newport and afterwards apprenticed to a picture-frame-maker. At the age of twenty-two he obtained a passage for New York, arriving in the United States with only a few dollars in his pockets. He thereafter began the career which he described in his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) - tramping thousands of miles across America, most often begging but also undertaking casual work and riding illicitly on freight trains. En route to the gold-diggings at the Klondike, Davies fell under a moving train, severing his right foot; his right leg was subsequently amputated below the knee. Davies eventually returned to Wales, then moved to London, where he lived in common lodging-houses, pedalling wares and preaching on street corners. He finally found a publisher for his poems and, between 1905 and 1939, published several slim volumes of poetry; it was during this period also that Davies befriended the poet Edward Thomas and his wife Helen. Davies produced four novels, including The True Traveller (1912) and The Adventures of Johnny Walker, Tramp (1926); other prose works included Beggars (1909), Nature (1914) and My Birds and my Garden (1933). He also edited several poetic anthologies and was joint editor of a monthly magazine called Form. Davies met his wife Helen at a bus stop in a poor part of London; they married in 1923 but had no children. Their relationship is celebrated in Love Poems (1935) and the posthumously published Young Emma (1980). Davies died at Nailsworth in Gloucestershire. The publication of W. H. Davies: Selected Poems in 1985 revived interest in the poet.