John Roby

John Roby (5 January 1793 – 18 June 1850) was an English banker, poet, and writer.

Life

Roby was born in Wigan, England, in 1793, the son of Mary Aspull and a schoolmaster named Nehemiah Roby. He began his career as a banker in Rochdale, Lancashire. In his work Lancashire Sketches, Edwin Waugh recalled that, while Roby was working for the firm of Fenton and Roby in Rochdale, Waugh worked as an apprentice at the bookshop next door.

For the clergy of the district, and for a certain class of politicians, this shop was the chief rendezvous of the place. Roby used to slip in at evening, to have a chat with my employer [Thomas Holden], and a knot of congenial spirits who met him there. In the days when my head was yet but a little way higher than the counter, I remember how I used to listen to his versatile conversations.

Roby died in a shipwreck in June 1850. Despite clear weather, the S. S. Orion struck rocky bottom at Portpatrick en route from Liverpool to Glasgow. Folklorist Simon Young has called Roby "the most important figure in the first phase of Lancashire folklore writing", but also "the despised father of Lancashire folklore".

Cited sources

Dorson, Richard M. (1999 [1968]). The British Folklorists: A History, History of British Folklore Vol. I. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-20476-3.

Roby, E. R. (1854). The Legendary and Poetical Remains of John Roby, Author of "Traditions of Lancashire." With a Sketch of His Literary Life and Career. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.