Songs of a Navvy. London: Published by P. MacGill, Windsor, [1911]. Pp 8, [4]. Portrait photograph of the Author. Publisher’s maroon wrappers printed in black, floral device to top right and bottom left corners in Presentation Binding of full vellum boards, with title stamped in gilt to upper left corner and decorative floral arrangement in purple, green and black embossed to lower right of upper cover; gold marbled endpapers. Boards slightly bowed and dust soiled otherwise a lovely copy in presentation binding of the author’s second published work.

Inscribed by the Author on front free endpaper.

Patrick MacGill – born Donegal in 1889 – became known as the ‘Navvy Poet’ when a slim little volume of poetry which he had mostly written when working on the railways in Scotland and which he called ‘Gleanings from a Navvy’s Scrapbook’ came to the notice of the literary critics in Britain. His poetry, much of it based on his own experience as a navvy, reflected his growing preoccupation with the poor and the downtrodden and those navvies who, like himself, toiled in the muck to build civilisation but lived on the outside of society.

This work, his second volume of poetry was well received. In one of his letters MacGill refers to the fact that “the book (Songs of a Navvy) is selling like wild fire, London is gone mad on it”