Edward Payson Weston Research

SUNDAY, 22 NOVEMBER 2009 23:28

The Greatest Walker Ever?

At long last, the painstaking work of piecing the Weston material together reaches online publication. If you do an internet search on "Edward Payson Weston," you will find that much of the material repeats a few main sources, such as Tom Talpey.

Most of this material on Weston is fresh, original research. A great debt goes to P.S. Marshall for his indispensable book, "King of the Peds." Then there are the New York Times press clippings from "The Gentle Art of Walking" (1972). Some other Weston material is slowly surfacing, which can be found in Google Books. The Bain Collection, a predecessor of the Associated Press, has a remarkable treasure trove of photographs.

The research effort is not merely one of discovery. It involves putting together puzzle pieces with incomplete parts. The newspaper accounts of another age spoke to a different audience, with different grammar and different priorities.

Photograph credit: New York Public Library. Hope the material intrigues you as much as it does me.

Enjoy! Charlie Duane

22 November 2009