Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Working-class poet, journalist, and Chartist. Born in Calton, Glasgow. Limited schooling. Learned English and Latin. Worked as a cotton factory operative. Destitute and abandoned by his family due to his alcoholism in the 1840s. Married Mary Wallace in 1825. Contributed to the *Liberator*. Emigrated to the United States but returned after sixteen months. Author of *Lays of the Covenanters* (published as a series in a Glasgow newspaper, and then as a volume) and nursery songs for the *Whistle Binkie*. Worked for the newspaper *Glasgow Examiner*. Biographical information: D. H. Edwards, *Modern Scottish Poets*, second series, D. H. Edwards, 1881, p. 72; Robert Brown, *Paisley Poets, with Brief Memoirs of them, and Selections from their Poetry*, vol. 2, J. & J. Cook, 1890, pp. 229-30; Charles Rogers, *The Modern Scottish Minstrel*, Adam and Charles Black, vol. 6, 1857, pp. 35-6; Kirstie Blair, *Working Verse in Victorian Scotland*, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 81-2; *Whistle-Binkie: Or, the Piper of the Party; Being a Collection of Songs for the Social Circle*, vols. 1-2, David Robertson, 1878. (AC, CC)