His themes included observations on life's hardships, the ways the human condition is reflected in nature, his tramping adventures and the characters he met.

He had an older brother, Francis Gomer Boase, born with part of his skull displaced, who Davies' biographer describes as "simple and peculiar".

She agreed that care of the three children should pass to their paternal grandparents, Francis and Lydia Davies, who ran the nearby Church House Inn at 14 Portland Street.

Davies returned to Britain, to a rough life largely in London shelters and doss-houses, including a Salvation Army hostel in Southwark known as "The Ark", which he grew to despise.

To publish it, Davies forwent his allowance to live as a tramp for six months (with the first draft of the book hidden in his pocket), just to secure a loan of funds from his inheritance.

He resorted to posting individual copies by hand to prospective wealthy customers chosen from the pages of Who's Who, asking them to send the price of the book, a half crown, in return.

[9] Thomas rented for Davies the tiny two-roomed Stidulph's Cottage in Egg Pie Lane, not far from his own home at Elses Farm near Sevenoaks in Kent.

[14] In 1907, the manuscript of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp drew the attention of George Bernard Shaw, who agreed to write a preface (largely through the efforts of his wife Charlotte).

"[9] By this time Davies had a library of some fifty books at his cottage, mostly 16th and 17th-century poets, among them Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Byron, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Blake and Herrick.

[18] After lodging at several addresses in Sevenoaks, Davies moved back to London early in 1914, settling eventually at 14 Great Russell Street in the Bloomsbury district.

[b] He lived there from early 1916 until 1921 in a small apartment, initially accompanied by an infestation of rodents, and adjacent to rooms occupied by a loud, Belgian prostitute.

[20][p.118] During this London period, Davies embarked on a series of public readings of his work, alongside others such as Hilaire Belloc and W. B. Yeats, impressing fellow poet Ezra Pound.

By the time he took a prominent place in the Edward Marsh Georgian Poetry series, he was an established figure, generally known for the opening lines of the poem "Leisure", first published in Songs of Joy and Others in 1911: "What is this life if, full of care / We have no time to stand and stare...." In October 1917 his work appeared in the anthology Welsh Poets: A Representative English selection from Contemporary Writers collated by A. G. Prys-Jones and published by Erskine Macdonald of London.

Later Days, a 1925 sequel to The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, describes the beginnings of Davies's writing career and his acquaintance with Belloc, Shaw, de la Mare and others.

[20] On 5 February 1923, Davies married 23-year-old Helen Matilda Payne at the Register Office, East Grinstead, Sussex, and the couple set up home in the town at Tor Leven, Cantelupe Road.

[9][24] Davies's book Young Emma was a frank, often disturbing account of his life before and after picking Helen up at a bus-stop in the Edgware Road near Marble Arch.

In 1930 Davies edited the poetry anthology Jewels of Song for Cape, choosing works by over 120 poets, including William Blake, Thomas Campion, Shakespeare, Tennyson and W. B. Yeats.

In September 1938, Davies attended the unveiling of a plaque in his honour at the Church House Inn; poet laureate, John Masefield, gave an address.

Sitwell noted that Davies looked "very ill", but that "his head, so typical of him in its rustic and nautical boldness, with the black hair now greying a little, but as stiff as ever, surrounding his high bony forehead, seemed to have acquired an even more sculptural quality."

Helen privately told Sitwell that Davies' heart showed "alarming symptoms of weakness" caused, according to doctors, by the continuous dragging weight of his wooden leg.

Davies himself confided in Sitwell: I've never been ill before, really, except when I had that accident and lost my leg.... And, d'you know, I grow so irritable when I've got that pain, I can't bear the sound of people's voices....

A support group of local residents, The Friends of Glendower, was established to raise funds for renovation, with the aims of enabling Phillips to return to the cottage and for it to be a commemoration of Davies' life and work.

Thomas' citation attempted a summary of Davies' themes, style and tone: "A Welshman, a poet of distinction, and a man in whose work much of the peculiarly Welsh attitude to life is expressed with singular grace and sincerity.

He has found romance in that which has become commonplace; and of the native impulses of an unspoilt heart, and the responses of a sensitive spirit, he has made a new world of experience and delight.

"[20] As I walked down the waterside This silent morning, wet and dark; Before the cocks in farmyards crowed, Before the dogs began to bark; Before the hour of five was struck By old Westminster's mighty clock:

As I walked down the waterside This morning, in the cold damp air, I saw a hundred women and men Huddled in rags and sleeping there: These people have no work, thought I, And long before their time they die.

Other materials include an archive of press cuttings, a collection of personal papers and letters, and a number of photographs of Davies and his family, as well as a sketch of him by William Rothenstein.

[38] There are also three songs by Sir Arthur Bliss: "Thunderstorms", "This Night", and "Leisure", and "The Rain" for voice and piano, by Margaret Campbell Bruce, published in 1951 by J. Curwen and Sons.

A musical adaptation of this poem with John Karvelas (vocals) and Nick Pitloglou (piano) and an animated film by Pipaluk Polanksi can be found on YouTube.

[42] A controversial statue by Paul Bothwell-Kincaid, inspired by the poem "Leisure", was unveiled in Commercial Street, Newport in December 1990, to mark Davies's work, on the 50th anniversary of his death.