Outrider of Empire: The Life and Adventures of Roger Pocock - Softcover

Pocock, Geoffrey A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0888644485 ISBN 13: 9780888644480

Publisher: University of Alberta Press, 2008

Synopsis

A dreamer of dreams, an adventurer, and a man of many ideas, Roger Pocock was an inveterate, world-ranging traveler who lived the life that all adventurous boys desire. He listened with wonder to the stories of all those he met, be they outlaws like Butch Cassidy, ranchers, or mounted police. Readers of all ages and classes eagerly devoured Pocock's western tales. Outrider of Empire is a testament to a prolific author and extraordinary man whose friends and acquaintances bridged the worlds of theatre, literature, the military, and science.

About this title

From the Back Cover

By the time Roger Pocock began his record-setting 3,600-mile odyssey down the Outlaw Trail of the Old American West in 1899, he had already been a pirate, a missionary, a soldier of fortune and a cowboy. Roger Pocock was an inveterate, world-ranging traveller who crossed paths with many influential people, including Prince Louis of Battenburg and Rudyard Kipling. Canada was always the land Roger loved best after his native Britain, perhaps because his brief stint in the North West Mounted Police during the Northwest Rebellion launched his career as a writer, and provided a major source of inspiration, both for his stories and in the creation of his greatest and longest-lived achievement, the Legion of Frontiersmen. The Frontiersmen were men of action rather than words and Outrider of Empire: The Adventures of Roger Pocock goes a long way towards telling the story of the often calamitous peregrinations of this endearing character. “Civilization is a poor thing to one who has lived the spacious life of the West.” —Roger Pocock in Rules of the Game “Roger Pocock was so modest that few except his closest friends could guess that life to him was, and always had been a splendid adventure.” —from Roger Pocock’s obituary in The Times, Nov 1941 “Roger Pocock was different from the majority of other gentlemen adventurers because he was a thinker, a man who dreamed dreams, but whose dreams and whose attempts at their realization too often ruled his head and turned him into a Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.” —The Frontiersmen Historian

About the Author

Though Geoffrey Pocock shares the same surname as the Founder of the Legion of Frontiersmen, he claims no near relationship. Nevertheless, he has spent a quarter of a century researching the Legion's history and the lives of many of its members. Geoffrey Pocock lives in a village on the Sussex Downs in England. Merrill Distad is Associate University Librarian for Research & Special Collections Services at the University of Alberta.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Alberta Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0888644485
• ISBN 13: 9780888644480
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400