William Mcgonagall ― Collected Poems

The execrable rhymes, the terrible scansion, the ludicrous subject matter - despite everything, William McGonagall remains one of Scotland's favourite poets.
Born probably in Edinburgh in 1825, McGonagall spent many years as a weaver until he discovered his true vocation in 1877. Since then, thousands of people the world over have enjoyed the verse of Scotland's alternative national poet. This edition brings together McGonagall's three famous collections - Poetic Gems, More Poetic Gems, and Last Poetic Gems, and contains all the autobiographical material which appeared in the original volumes. It also features the first publication of McGonagall's only play, Jack o' the Cudgel, written in 1886 but not performed publicly until 2002.

William Topaz McGonagall was a self-educated hand loom weaver who, in Dundee in 1877, felt the poetic muse upon him. He spent the next twenty-five years appalling and delighting audiences with his disjointed, creaky and sometimes just plain bad verse. Lines on everything from great tragedies to odes to royalty and itinerant whales flowed from his pen and have been celebrated by everyone from The Muppets to Monty Python and The Goons. Chris Hunt is Webmaster of the standard McGonagall website.