The poems by William William Topaz McGonagall lived from to 29 September He is widely celebrated as the worst poet to have written in the English language, or quite possibly in any other. McGonagall was born in Edinburgh and spent his childhood until the age of 11 in Orkney.
William Topaz McGonagall was William McGonagall (March [2] – 29 September ) was a Scottish poet and public performer. He gained notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work.
As the letter declared, Each January, the life and works of the greatest of all Scottish poets, Rabbie Burns are celebrated. The words of the great man are read out aloud for all to appreciate, whilst little mention is made of William Topaz McGonagall – the bard of Dundee.
McGonagall wrote a prose autobiography but Sir William Topaz McGonagall, who styled himself Knight of the White Elephant of Burma, was born in Edinburgh (so he claimed, although this is disputed) and, after many years in Dundee, died in the Scottish capital aged
William Topaz (1825-1902, Scottish poet)
William Topaz McGonagall was, in his own mind, the second best poet Britain ever produced and is certainly Dundee’s most famous exponent of the written word. An amusing backwards evening William Topaz McGonagall was born of rather poor Irish parents in Edinburgh, Scotland, in March In his nearly unreadable, rambling biographical notes1, one eventually learns that he sprang from a family of five children and that he worked with his father as a handloom weaver.
The late Ex-Provost Rough William McGonagall was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His family were originally Irish. McGonagall worked as a weaver in Dundee. In , when he was probably 52 years old, he suddenly found that he liked writing poetry. He wrote a poem about a local vicar and sent it to the Dundee Weekly News. The editor thought it was a joke, and he published.
EDINBURGH, Scotland -- Like William Topaz McGonagall Biography William Topaz McGonagall was born of rather poor Irish parents in Edinburgh, Scotland, in March In his nearly unreadable.