McGonagall's Bannockburn - 1901
McGonagall produced these quite lavish broadsheets as means of enhancing his sometimes meagre income. Battles and celebrated historical events were favourite themes. The assumed warrant (ER = Edwardus, Rex i.e. Edward VII) and other "endorsements" were based on acknowledgments of receipt of poetic gifts, usually composed and despatched by private secretaries.
He styled himself "Sir William Topaz McGonagall" on account of a hoax perpetrated by students in 1894. He received a letter, purported to be written by C. Macdonald, Poet Laureate of Burmah at the Court of King Theebaw, Andaman Islands, which created him a "Knight of the White Elephant of Burmah". It is difficult to envisage that McGonagall didn't see through this juvenile, albeit elaborate, hoax, but he nevertheless consistently thereafter styled himself as such.
The broadsheets sold, if at all, for a few old pence on publication. Such is McGonagall's fame (or notoriety) one hundred years after his death, however, that a signed copy was recently (2002) offered on the Internet for $8,500.
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