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= Josiah_Flynt =
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Introduction
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Josiah Flynt Willard (January 23, 1869 - January 20, 1907), who wrote
under the name Josiah Flynt, was an American sociologist and author.
Biography
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Flynt was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Oliver and Mary Bannister
Willard. His father was editor of the local paper. He would later say
that his earliest memory was of fleeing his nurse after being beaten
"for some small offense"; the flight brought him "a ... measure of
unalloyed joy."
Willard's father died in March 1878. While being raised by his mother
and grandmother, he frequently ran away. He was sent to live in
small-town Nebraska and an Illinois boarding house. In 1884, when his
mother and sisters left for Europe, he was sent to a college in
Illinois where he found success in history and modern languages. When
he placed third in an essay contest, he was inconsolable and left that
college permanently.
He then was involved in theft, eventually being sent to a reform
school for a year. He escaped, made his way to West Virginia, and
began the eight-month tramp that would lead to his writing career and
assumed expertise on tramps and tramping.
Afterward he left for Europe to stay with his mother. He was educated
at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (in Berlin) from 1890 to 1895.
While in Europe he visited England, Switzerland, Italy, and Russia.
Among luminaries he met were Leo Tolstoy and Henrik Ibsen.
It was while in St. Petersburg that he first took place in a police
raid. Shortly after returning to the United States in 1898, he
received an invitation from railroad executive L. F. Loree to return
to tramping and spy on the tramps using the railroad, as well as the
private policemen who were supposed to be enforcing the anti-tramp
rules. After a month of this, he decided he could do the job while
riding in comfort as a passenger.
After several years of experience as a vagrant, he had published
'Tramping with Tramps' in 1899, a picaresque study. His further works
dealing with the lower and criminal classes include 'The Powers that
Prey' (1900), a collection of short stories written in collaboration
with Alfred Hodder (writing pseudonymously as Francis Walton), 'Notes
of an Itinerant Policeman' (1900), 'The World of Graft' (1901), a
volume of short stories, and 'The Little Brother' (1902), his only
sustained attempt in fiction. His name is perpetuated in the annals of
fiction as the dedicatee of Jack London's 'The Road'.
Willard had been a heavy smoker since the age of nine and a long-time
alcoholic. At age thirty-seven he contracted pneumonia. He was in
Chicago for 'Cosmopolitan', working on a story about pool gambling
when he fell ill, locked himself in a hotel room, and stayed until he
died on January 20, 1907. He was buried at Rosehill Cemetery.
License
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Flynt
