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Dr. Owen Clayton is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Lincoln (UK). His first monograph, Literature and Photography in Transition, 1850-1915, came out with Palgrave MacMillan in 2015. He is working on his second monograph, entitled Vagabonds, Tramps, and Hobos: the Literature and Culture of American Transiency. He is the editor of Representing Homelessness, published as part of the Proceedings of the British Academy series (Oxford University Press, 2021). Roving Bill Aspinwall (1845-1921) was born one of 23 siblings, married 5 times, wounded fighting for the Union in one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War, kicked out of numerous jobs and solders' homes for drunkenness, and spent decades wandering as penniless vagabond. Bill also kept up a 24-year correspondence with John James McCook, Professor of Modern Languages at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. In so doing Bill provided the earliest and best account of life on the road by an American hobo.
