Poetic Gems

First gathered in the late nineteenth century, this is a collection of William McGonagall's topical verses. Typical pieces commemorate the Tay Bridge disaster, battles, royal visits, and local events in Dundee, written in lumbering ballad lines that name streets, tonnages, and officials. The speaker praises heroes, warns against drink, and records public calamity with earnest literalness. Rhyme is forced and metre uneven by design of the style rather than by parody from without. The book is a gathering of occasional poems, not a novel and not a selection of other Scottish verse.

Bound in grey-brown cloth with a collage design in dark brown by Foreman. Black endleaves. Dark red slipcase.