now, mine shall sell at
$15,000 per line.
EDINBURGH, Scotland – The vocabulary is poor and the rhyme excruciating but a collector paid $12,840 Friday for original works by William Topaz McGonagall, internationally celebrated as the worst poet ever to assault the English language.
Up for auction was a collection of 35 poems McGonagall self-published in the 1890s, in which he rambles about everything from a theatre fire and the life of Robert Burns to women's suffrage and Britain's imperial wars. Bad as it was, it did not reach the top estimate of $15,600 at the sale, conducted by Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon
