John Hartley

Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, John Hartley was an English poet and prose writer best remembered for writing in Yorkshire dialect. His work often mixed humor with sentiment and paid close attention to the lives of ordinary people, especially the poverty and pressures of industrial Yorkshire.

He wrote a large amount of prose and verse and became widely associated with the Original Illuminated Clock Almanack, which he wrote and edited for many years. Hartley also created popular dialect pieces featuring characters such as Sammywell Grimes, helping preserve the sound and character of local speech for later readers.

Today he is remembered as a distinctive regional writer whose poems and stories offer both entertainment and a vivid picture of nineteenth-century Yorkshire life.