John Collier

John Collier

John Collier is widely acknowledged as the first great Lancashire dialect writer and produced his work under the pseudonym Tim Bobbin.

Born the son of a curate in Urmston in 1708, Collier became a schoolmaster in Milnrow at the tender age of twenty where he stayed for the rest of his life, producing extensive prose and verse in the dialect of south Lancashire.

Collier's prose works are his most celebrated and his dialogue 'Tummus and Meary' (Thomas and Mary) was very highly regarded by the mid-Victorian school of dialect writers, who saw Collier as a founding father.

'The Lancashire Dialect', Tim Bobbin's collected verses went into more than twenty editions and by eighteenth-century standards must have been considered a highly successful bestseller. Some of his works have never been out of print since that time.

John Collier died in 1786 and was buried in Rochdale at the church of St. Chad, where his gravestone read:

It is here, where his dust perished,
That his memory is most cherished.

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