MACGILL, Patrick.

£325 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Soldier Songs. First US edition, first printing, in the very scarce dust jacket, of this collection of First World War poems by Irish poet Patrick MacGill (1889-1963), known as "the Navvy Poet", who enlisted in the London Irish Rifles, as a stretcher-bearer, and was wounded at Loos. Macgill's Soldier Songs was published in the UK in the same year as this edition. This copy bears the ownership inscription, in pencil to the front pastedown, of a "P. R. Minahan", with three dated locations, "Fort Riley, Kaw, Feb. 1. 1918, Ellington Field, Houston, Texas, May 9, 1918, Eberts Field, Lonoke, Ark, July, 17, 1918", dotting his way between US army bases during the First World War. Dr Patrick Robert Minahan (1875-1953), of Wisconsin, received a degree in Medicine from the University of Illinois in 1898, and was a Captain in the Medical Reserve Corps during the First World War. Clearly of Irish ancestry himself like MacGill, he also had poetic pretensions of his own, composing the words to "Going on an Over: War Song" in 1917, and a collection entitled Poems from the Annals of Esmond in 1948.

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