A relatively minor poet known for being romantic, ornate, and rhetorical, Wilson Pugsley MacDonald retains a small coterie of enthusiasts even to the present. Known mainly in his own time for his considerable platform abilities in a series of public readings, he was the rarest of birds in modern society, the individual who derives his living from poetry alone.

Born in Cheapside, Ontario, in 1880, MacDonald attended Woodstock College and was an undergraduate at McMaster University when first published as a poet by the Toronto Globe in 1899. He graduated in 1902 and traveled around Britain for a period of months. Returning to Canada he worked in a bank and then later was employed by an advertising firm in the United States, where he wrote copy. In 1918, after publishing some poetry in newspapers under the name Frederick MacLean, he published his first volume of poetry under his own name, Song of...