Bart Kennedy: Hater of Slavery, Tramp and Professor of Walking

Bart Kennedy thrived in the 1900s when his name became a byword for the literature of “trampdom.” He also produced a piece of radical working class writing, Slavery: Pictures from the Depths (1905), that should have earned him a place in the annals of proletarian literature. But he does not figure in any survey of the field. As one of the submerged, Kennedy knew what life was like in overcrowded unsanitary habitations, tramp wards, workhouses or sweatshops. This article profiles Kennedy, concentrating on the works that still hold an interest for present day readers: Slavery, read against the foil of a later Lancashire classic, Walter Greenwood’s novel Love on the Dole (1933); the two road books A Man Adrift (1899) and A Sailor Tramp (1902); and the late Golden Green (1926), a paean to the English countryside.