Background

Stephen Graham was born on March 16, 1884, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the son of P. Anderson Graham, an essayist, editor, and writer, who was influential on his son’s schooling and early writing style.

Career

At the age of fourteen, Graham quit school and began working the following year. Nikolai Lebedev invited him to Lisichansk, a village north of the Sea of Azov in Russia. This early travel adventure made a lasting and life-changing impression on Graham, and he quit his London job and left his respectable home to “tramp” through Russia.

Graham’s writing began to appear in many newspapers and magazines, allowing him to make a living wage early in his writing life. He moved back to London, where he lived in the same house until his death in 1975. His first wife rarely came along on his travels, and a year after their marriage Graham returned to Russia on his first solo tramp. During this excursion in 1911, he wrote A Vagabond in the Caucasus which introduced his Russia to a British audience. A Vagabond in the Caucasus encapsulated Graham’s early adventures in Russia and captured his initial wonderment and enthusiasm. In it, he paints a picturesque portrait of the culture and customs particular to the peasants of the time.

Between 1910 and 1912, Graham wrote A Tramp's Sketches while traveling through the area of the Crimea, the coast of the Black Sea, the Urals, Vladikavkaz, and Moscow. With Poor Immigrants to America, published in 1914, was inspired by Graham’s Jerusalem pilgrimage and desire to once again travel as a commentator of the Russian immigrant experience. Graham obtained passage to America on an immigrant steamer and arrived Easter Day, 1913, in New York City. Upon arriving he tramped through the American countryside, walking from New York to Chicago. Graham’s last book dealing with Russia is The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary, written in Russia and Egypt during 1914 and 1915.

Because of his experience in the army, Graham was able to write The Soul of John Brown in 1920. Following this, he wrote 1921 ’s The Challenge of the Dead. With this book, he returned to France to visit the battlefields and recreate lost war stories that engaged his readers’ emotions powerfully. With Vachel Lindsay tramped through Glacier National Park in Montana. This experience led to Tramping with a Poet in the Rockies. Graham was greatly influenced by the poet, and within the book, their two voices combine in dialogue and description. In 1923, Graham published In Quest of El Dorado in which he follows the route of Columbus on his voyage to the New World.

With 1925’s London Nights Graham returns to his investigation of city life. This time it is self-investigation he is interested in, and he delves into London’s many eccentric characters and their habitats. During this period Graham also began to concentrate less on tramping and more on writing biography, historical commentary, and fiction.

Achievements

• Stephen Graham is known as a British writer who early in his career became enamored with Russia. He devoted a large part of his life traveling through Russia and writing about his experiences. He became an authority on Russia before the revolution, and he translated Russian literature and interpreted Russian culture for the British people. Most of his early works were travel books, and he made art and created a philosophy out of what he called “tramping.” Through his travels and writings, Graham collected and studied the characters he met and offered first-hand commentary and insights on important political situations, as well as on history.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Vagabond in the Caucasus: With Some Notes of His Experiences Among the Russians
  • Undiscovered Russia
  • A Tramp's Sketches
  • Changing Russia
  • With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem
  • With Poor Immigrants to America
  • The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary
  • Russia and the World: A Study of the War and a Statement of the World-Problems That Now Confront Russia and Great Britain
  • Through Russian Central Asia
  • Russia in 1916
  • Priest of the Ideal
  • The Quest of the Face
  • A Private in the Guards
  • Children of the slaves
  • The Challenge of the Dead

Views

Graham's idea of Holy Russia lost favor, mostly due to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The British government informed Graham that his viewpoint was “unhelpful,” and he was forbidden to return to Russia. After World War I, Graham changed his focus and began to study city life. He believed he could examine in close detail the evils of materialism and its corrupting influence within the focused confines of the city.

Personality

Graham was a man of strong faith as well as endurance.

Interests

• Traveling, fishing

Connections

While traveling in Russia, he met his first wife, Rosa Savory, and, in 1909, they married even though she was fifteen years his senior. But she died in 1956, and, the same year, Stephen married Vera Mitrinovich.

Through his second job as a clerk, Graham befriended with Nikolai Lebedev. The young Graham also had made important contacts with such person as Austin Harrison, editor of the English Review, who encouraged him to write professionally. While Graham was in the United States, he met the poet Vachel Lindsay.

Father:

P. Anderson Graham

ex-wife:

Rosa Savory

Died in 1956.

Wife:

Vera Mitrinovich

Friend:

Nikolai Lebedev

Friend:

Vachel Lindsay

References

• Beyond Holy Russia: The Life and Times of Stephen Graham