text: Honours, memorials and legacy In 1926 Davies received a degree of Doctor Litteris, honoris causa, from the University of Wales. He returned to his native Newport in 1930, where he was honoured with a luncheon at the Westgate Hotel. His return in September 1938 for the unveiling of the plaque in his honour proved to be his last public appearance.
  The National Library of Wales holds a large collection of Davies manuscripts. Items include poems such as a copy of "A Boy's Sorrow", a 16-line poem about the death of a neighbor which appears never to have been published and a collection, Quiet Streams, again with some unpublished poems. Other materials include an archive of press cuttings, a collection of personal papers and letters, and a number of photographs of Davies and his family, as well as a sketch of him by William Rothenstein.
  Davies's Autobiography of a Super-Tramp influenced a generation of British writers, including Gerald Brenan (1894–1987).
  In 1951 Jonathan Cape published The Essential W. H. Davies, selected and introduced by Brian Waters, a Gloucestershire poet and writer whose work Davies admired, who described him as "about the last of England's professional poets". The collection included The Autobiography of a Super-tramp, and extracts from Beggars, A Poet's Pilgrimage, Later Days, My Birds and My Garden, along with over 100 poems arranged by period of publication period.