The most common judgment made of R. B. Cunninghame Graham is that his life was more interesting than his writing. That view is not incorrect, but then his life was to an unusual degree varied, involving an amount of travel rivaling that of such great Victorian adventurers as Sir Richard Burton and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, along with efforts at earning a livelihood in singular and sometimes dangerous enterprises (including ranching on the pampas in South America, searching for a legendary gold mine in Spain, and selling horses in a South American civil war) before he inherited a debt-laden ancestral property. His socialist political convictions made him an exciting if frequently disruptive member of Parliament and led him to a prison term following a political demonstration. He was both the founder of the separatist National party of Scotland and a friend of the poet, interior designer, and Marxist William...