Children of the Dead End. The Autobiography of a Navvy. London: Jenkins, 1914. First Edition. Pp, 305, [32]. Publisher’s red pictorial cloth boards, title lettered in black to upper cover & in gilt to spine. Light rubbing to upper cover and pale stain to lower boards. Otherwise a fine bright copy.

The author’s greatest literary success, an autobiographical account of his early life as a labourer in Scotland.

Patrick MacGill – born Donegal in 1889 – became known as the ‘Navvy Poet’. By the time ‘Children of the Dead End’  was published in March 1914 he was working as a librarian in Windsor Castle.