Patrick MacGill - born Donegal in 1889 - became known as the ‘Navvy Poet’ when a slim little volume of poetry which he had mostly written when working on the railways in Scotland and which he called ‘Gleanings from a Navvy’s Scrapbook’ came to the notice of the literary critics in Britain.  It was at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century and the young MacGill was only about twenty years of age.  He had, though, already lived a hard and adventurous life.

Even though he had but a rudimentary education he read voraciously. His poetry, much of it based on his own experience as a navvy, reflected his growing preoccupation with the poor and the downtrodden and those navvies who, like himself, toiled in the muck to build civilisation but lived on the outside of society.  His first collection of poetry, which he published himself and sold, at sixpence a copy, from door to door in Greenock where he was living at the time, together with articles he had submitted to the Daily Express in London incredibly resulted in his being offered a job by that newspaper. Thus his life was to change utterly.

During the First World War he served with the London Irish Rifles and was wounded at Loos in 1915. His novel The Great Push was written as result of his wartime experiences. 

Bibliography

Children of the Dead End: The Autobiography of a Navvy
The Rat-Pit
The Amateur Army
The Red Horizon
The Great Push: An Episode in the Great War
The Brown Brethren
[as John O’Gorman] The Dough-Boys
The Diggers: The Australians in France, foreword by W. M. Hughes, Australian PM
Glenmornan
Maureen
Fear!
Lanty Hanlon: A Comedy of Irish Life
Moleskin Joe
The Carpenter of Orra
Sid Puddiefoot
Una Cassidy
Tulliver’s Mill
The Glen of Carra
The House at the World's End
Helen Spencer

Poetry
Gleanings from a Navvy's Scrapbook (Derry: Derry Journal 1910)
Songs of a Navvy (Windsor: P. MacGill 1911)
Songs of the Dead End (London: Year Book Press 1912)
Soldier Songs (London: Herbert Jenkins 1917)
Songs of Donegal (London: Herbert Jenkins 1921)
The Navvy Poet: Collected Poetry of Patrick MacGill (London: Caliban 1984) [Songs of Donegal; Songs of the Dead End; Soldier Songs]

Black Bonar