CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END (NEW ISLAND)

Patrick MacGill (1889 - 1963) was an Irish journalist, poet and novelist. He was born in County Donegal and emigrated in his early teens to work in Scotland as a tattie howker and navvy. Self-educated in English, French and German through circulating libraries, he sold a copy of his first collection of poems to Neil Munro, who brought MacGill to public attention. The autobiographical novel Children of the Dead End, which vividly revealed and condemned entrenched poverty in Ireland and Britain, sold 10,000 copies in a fortnight in 1914.