author

Walter Thom

1770–1824

A Scottish writer and journalist with a knack for lively, practical subjects, he wrote both a local history of Aberdeen and an early book on competitive walking. His career also took him from bookselling in Scotland to newspaper work in Dublin.

1 Audiobook

Pedestrianism; or, An Account of the Performances of Celebrated Pedestrians During the Last and Present Century. With a full narrative of Captain Barclay's public and private matches; and an essay on training.

Pedestrianism; or, An Account of the Performances of Celebrated Pedestrians During the Last and Present Century. With a full narrative of Captain Barclay's public and private matches; and an essay on training.

by Walter Thom

About the author

Born in 1770 at Bervie in Kincardineshire, Walter Thom was a Scottish writer and journalist who later worked as a bookseller in Aberdeen. In 1813 he moved to Dublin to serve as editor of the Dublin Journal, and he died there on 16 June 1824.

He is best known for two very different books: The History of Aberdeen (1811) and Pedestrianism (1813), a work on the celebrated long-distance walkers of his day. He also contributed to major reference and survey projects, including Brewster's Encyclopaedia, Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, and William Shaw Mason's Statistical Account of Ireland.

Thom's work gives a glimpse of a versatile early 19th-century man of letters: part historian, part journalist, and part observer of everyday culture. Even in his more specialized writing, there is a practical, curious spirit that makes his books an interesting record of the world he lived in.