Biography

Kennedy was born in Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

 of Irish parents. From the age of 6 until about the age of 20 he worked in cotton mills and machine shops in Manchester, England. At age 20 he left England, working as a deckhand on a cargo ship which landed him in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

. Illiterate and with no money or formal training, he used the force of his strength (and fist) to "tramp

Tramp

A tramp is a long term homeless person who travels from place to place as a vagrant, traditionally walking or hiking all year round. In British English meanwhile a tramp simply refers to a homeless person, usually not a travelling one....

" his way westward across North America. He worked at various laboring jobs including as an oysterman on a skipjack on the Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Bay

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...

; a miner in New York; building railroad sheds in the Canadian Rockies

Canadian Rockies

The Canadian Rockies comprise the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains range. They are the eastern part of the Canadian Cordillera, extending from the Interior Plains of Alberta to the Rocky Mountain Trench of British Columbia. The southern end borders Idaho and Montana of the USA...

; and panning for gold in the Klondike

Klondike, Yukon

The Klondike is a region of the Yukon in northwest Canada, east of the Alaska border. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon from the east at Dawson....

. He eventually ended up in California where he had various jobs in the theater, including as a singer and actor, before returning to England where he married in 1897.

Writing career

Kennedy published his first novel, Darab's Wine Cup, in 1897, followed by The Wandering Romanoff (1898). A fair amount of autobiography is contained in A Man Adrift (1899), A Sailor Tramp (1902) and A Tramp in Spain (1904), books about his "tramping" exploits around the world. John Sutherland (1989) says "As an author, he is one of the early advocates of 'tramp

Tramp

A tramp is a long term homeless person who travels from place to place as a vagrant, traditionally walking or hiking all year round. In British English meanwhile a tramp simply refers to a homeless person, usually not a travelling one....

ing', as the source of literary inspiration."

Kennedy also wrote articles for magazines such as The New Age

The New Age

The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling...

.

A review of A Tramp in Spain notes that Kennedy took several opportunities in that work to voice his disapproval of the United States that he had seen in 1882-1897.

Published works

• Darab's Wine Cup (1897)
• The Wandering Romanoff (1898)
• A Man Adrift (1899)
• A Sailor Tramp (1902)
• A Tramp in Spain (1904)
• Slavery (1905)
• The Green Sphinx (1905)
• The German Danger (1907)
• Soldiers of Labour (1917)
• Golden Green (1926)

External links

• Works by or about Bart Kennedy at Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
  
  (scanned books original editions color illustrated)