The American Vagrant in Literature: Race, Work and Welfare

by Assistant Professor of Literature and a Fellow at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study Bryan Yaze and Bryan Yazell

This book argues that the rapid development of anti-vagrancy laws in the late nineteenth century, which were written alongside widespread public fascination with 'tramps', facilitated a transatlantic dialogue between sources eager to modernize the state's ability to describe, catalogue, and manage this roving population. Almost always depicted as white, solitary, and artistic, the tramp character was once a menacing threat to society only to disappear...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1399506722
• ISBN13: 9781399506724
• Release Date: February 2025
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Length: 192 Pages