Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Working-class poet, writing in Scots and English. Born in Tullybelton, Perthshire. His father was a farmer, and then a day labourer, and his mother a saleswoman. Nicoll went to school in the winter and worked with a herd of cattle in the summer. Was apprenticed at age sixteen to a grocer and wine merchant in Perth until 1832, after which he moved to Edinburgh and met Robert Gilfillan and Robert Chambers and began to publish. Moved to Dundee and was involved in liberal politics and established a circulating library. Became editor of the Leeds Times in 1836, and married Alice Souter (Suter) on 9 December 1836. Unwell with tuberculosis, he returned from Leeds to Edinburgh for his health, but died in Edinburgh shortly afterwards. Author of Poems and Lyrics (1835). Biographical information: ODNB. (AC)