Alfred C. B. (Alfred Charles Benson) Fletcher

Born in 1885, Alfred Charles Benson Fletcher is best known for From Job to Job Around the World, a travel memoir built from a long journey he began after graduating from the University of California in 1907. Contemporary accounts describe him as active in campus life, including work as editor of the Daily Californian, before he set off to see how far nerve, odd jobs, and persistence could take him.

That trip became the heart of his writing. Rather than traveling in comfort, Fletcher supported himself along the way by taking whatever work he could find, which gave his book an unusually practical, firsthand feel. The result is a vivid account of movement, labor, and encounter across different countries, told with the brisk pace of someone who was always heading toward the next job and the next port.

He died in 1928, at only 43 years old. Though not widely famous today, Fletcher has remained of interest to readers of classic travel writing because his work captures a restless, self-reliant style of world travel that now feels both distant and surprisingly modern.