£1,071
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs | 725
Auction: 8 February 2023 at 10:00 GMT
Edinburgh: [printed for the author], 1899. Printed broadside, wood-engraved royal arms at head, signed by the author ('Sir Wm. Topaz McGonagall, Poet') at head, mounted, framed and glazed, mount aperture 23 x 18cm, faint transverse creases where previously folded, not examined out of frame
Note:
Very rare broadside by the infamously bad Scottish poet, one copy traced in libraries world-wide, at the National Library of Scotland. His genius for inadvertent bathos is exemplified by the second stanza:
'Then as for Leith Fort, it was erected in 1779, which is really grand,
And which is now the artillery head-quarters in Bonnie Scotland;
And as for the Docks, they are magnificent to see,
They comprise five docks, two piers, and 1141 yards long respectively.'