This small collection, fully entitled Wm. McGonagall, Poet. A choice selection of his best pieces. With a sketch of his life and work. Critical and biographical was published in Glasgow by one Lowden Macartney eight years after the poet’s death. It’s perhaps the first indication that interest in McGonagall might persist into the future.
It opens with passages entitled Some Examples of M’Gonagall’s “Poetry”, with the Editor’s observations thereon and Sketch of the “Poet”, with some account of his travels and adventures in the roles of tramp-poet, actor and elocutionist followed by the following selection of gems:
- The Den o’ Fowlis
- Attempted Assassination of the Queen
- Baldovan Mansion
- Loch Leven
- Lost on the Prairie
- The Kessack Ferry-Boat Fatality
- An Address to the New Tay Bridge
- The Famous Tay Whale
- Descriptive Jottings of London
- Beautiful Nairn
- Loch Katrine
- The Beautiful City of Perth
- The Beautiful City of Glasgow
- The Fair Maid of Perth’s House
- The Newport Railway
- The Heatherblend Club Banquet
- General Gordon, the Hero of Khartoum
- The Battle of Tel-el-Kebir
- The Horrors of Majuba
- Adventures of King Robert the Bruce
- The Black Watch Memorial
- Jottings of New York
