author

Walter J. Clutterbuck

1853–1937

Adventure, sharp observation, and a dry sense of humor run through these late-Victorian travel books. Their author ranged from Norway and British Columbia to Arctic waters, Ceylon, and Borneo, often illustrating his journeys with his own photographs.

1 Audiobook

Three in Norway, by Two of Them

Three in Norway, by Two of Them

by Walter J. Clutterbuck, J. A. (James Arthur) Lees

About the author

Walter J. Clutterbuck (1853–1937) was a British travel writer and photographer best known for lively late-19th-century travel books. He first drew notice as one of the anonymous co-authors of Three in Norway in 1882, a humorous account of outdoor adventure that helped establish his voice as an observant and entertaining narrator.

Over the next few years he published a string of travel works, including B.C. 1887: A Ramble in British Columbia, The Skipper in Arctic Seas, and About Ceylon and Borneo. Sources from this conversation describe him as having taken up photography not long after Three in Norway, and many of his books were illustrated from sketches and photographs made on his journeys.

After marrying the painter Violet Esther Drury Smith in 1892, he appears to have moved away from publishing travel books, though not from travel itself. Later notes linked to his work say he continued photographing abroad in places such as China, Japan, Norway, Hong Kong, Italy, Tenerife, France, and Portugal, leaving behind the picture of a restless traveler whose curiosity outlasted his writing career.