author
Harry L. (Harry La Tourette) Foster
1894–1932
A restless early-20th-century travel writer turned far-flung journeys into lively books about Latin America, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and Asia. His work mixes adventure, humor, and the eye of someone who was always ready to go one country farther.
1 Audiobook
A Gringo in Mañana-Land
by Harry L. (Harry La Tourette) Foster
About the author
Born in Brooklyn in 1894, Harry La Tourette Foster was an American travel writer whose books carried readers across Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Fiji, North Africa, and the Far East. Library and archive records consistently identify him as Harry L. Foster and date his life to 1894–1932.
Foster built his reputation on energetic travel narratives including A Beachcomber in the Orient, A Gringo in Mañana-Land, A Tropical Tramp with the Tourists, A Vagabond in Fiji, Combing the Caribbees, A Vagabond in Barbary, and If You Go to South America. Contemporary summaries describe him as a world wanderer and travel writer with a taste for firsthand experience, and his books were often illustrated with photographs he took himself.
He died in 1932, leaving behind a compact but memorable body of travel writing from the interwar years. His appeal today lies in that sense of motion: the feeling that every port, railway, or dusty road might open into another story.