Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Working-class poet, writing in Scots and English. Born in Edinburgh. After the death of his father, at age twelve he moved with his mother to Glasgow and then became apprenticed to a potter (probably at Annfield pottery, according to the signature in his poem for Chambers’s Journal 5 August 1848 [Chimes for the Times]). Attended a night school in Glasgow. Married Janet Wylie in 1849. In 1862 moved to London, and later emigrated to America where he settled in Rochester. Biographical information: J. D. R., William Lyle, The Magazine of Poetry, vol. 6, no. 8, 1894, p. 375; John D. Ross, Scottish Poets in America, Pagan and Ross, 1889, pp. 68-76; VIAF. (AC)