Vagabondage: A Timeless Reaction to the Malignancy of Western Civilization

Anyone who wants to understand the vagabond as a core archetype of humanity can hardly do better than become a fellow traveller on Ian Cutler’s magnificent journey across several millennia of tramping. This book will change your idea of what civilization and especially Western civilization means; it may also change your idea of what it means to be human.

Yiannis Gabriel
Emeritus Professor
Bath University, UK


Ian Cutler expertly and impressively covers a staggering amount of literary and philosophical territory in “Vagabondage: A Timeless Reaction to the Malignancy of Western Civilization.” He deftly explores a wide range of aspects of this challenging and complex subject, insightfully probing the mighty depths beneath this fascinating territory. Along the way, he puts you in such celebrated company as Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens and Jack Kerouac, as well as some rovers and writers whose words are lesser known but no less valuable. Throughout this odyssey, Cutler remains our able guide, pointing out the common themes that have shaped and defined vagabond literature.

Mark Dawidziak
Kent State University


Ian Cutler is the greatest living authority on the now almost extinct tramp writer. In this beautifully written and scholarly analysis of the philosophy of male and female literary vagabondage he traces the genre’s roots back to the Cynics.
Reading it made me want to pack my rucksack and escape from the noisy buzzing of the human zoo and tramp the rolling road leaving my cares and obligations behind me.

Dr. Andrew Lees
Honorary Professor of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences
University College London


Ian Cutler's latest book, “Vagabondage: A Timeless Reaction to the Malignancy of Western Civilization,” follows earlier chroniclers of vagabondage (from Arthur Rickett to Stephen Graham) in offering a broad conception of the term as a philosophical outlook and way of life. Taking us on a whistle-stop tour, from Diogenes to Nietszche, Cutler itemises the defining attributes of this broad system of belief: from an inclination to wander to a tendency towards introspection; from an implicit childishness to a love of nature - with a central connecting disregard for the Platonic attributes of mainstream Western civilisation uniting the many authors subject to scrutiny. Cutler's book is an impassioned and idiosyncratic 'diatribe' (in true Cynic fashion) against the process of civilisation, offering insights into an eclectic array of dissenters, many of whom (in particular, the homeless writers that formed the subject of Cutler's “The Lives And Extraordinary Adventures Of Fifteen Tramp Writers From The Golden Age Of Vagabondage”) have been unfairly neglected. A valuable insight for those interested in vagabondage in its many cultural forms.

Dr Luke Davies
Keele University


Ian Cutler is the laureate of itinerants and loiterers. In his latest contribution to the literature on vagabonds, he offers not only an erudite compendium of tramping since ancient times but a characteristically thought-provoking, even moving meditation on what it means to feel, in one’s legs and one’s soul, that restless longing to be on the road. I learned a great deal from it and will return to it again and again.

Matthew Beaumont
Department of English Literature
University College London