Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Rural-class Scottish poet, known as the “Eskdale Poet.” Born at Crooks, Westerkirk, the illegitimate son of William Park, who emigrated to Grenada and left William with his paternal grandfather. Educated at the parochial school. Read widely thanks to the local subscription library. Worked as a cow herd, servant, then tenant farmer. Became the editors of the Dumfries Standard just before his death. Author of The Vale of Esk and Other Poems (1833). Biographical information: Charles Rogers (ed.), The Modern Scottish Minstrel, vol. 3, Adam and Charles Black, 1856, pp. 97-8. (AC)