YOUNGER Rochdalians may know little of Edwin Waugh, but this Victorian giant of literature was a master of his trade.

Indeed in an age when Charles Dickens was making his mark, his moniker was ‘The Lancashire Burns’ – a compliment no other Rochdale-born writer, before or since, has come remotely close to emulating.

Much has been written about him. For years the Rochdale-based Edwin Waugh (pronounced Waff) Dialect Society used to ascend Knowl Moor to a well where they would recite his dialect poetry.

A pub in Heywood bears his name and there are countless other landmarks which honour the man whose creative writing and fondness for the Lancashire vernacular were his indelible qualities.

Many books have been published about Waugh, who was born in Toad Lane, Rochdale, in 1817 and spent a great deal of his life in the town, and also Manchester, then known as Cottonopolis because of its status as an international centre of the cotton and textile industry.

And now there’s a new addition – ‘The Diary of Edwin Waugh’, edited and abridged by Brian Hollingworth – which contains many of his previously unpublished accounts of Victorian life in Rochdale and Manchester betweeen 1847 and 1851.

He wrote the diary when he was only 30, unknown and in debt. He had not long been married and it was his new job as assistant secretary of the Lancashire Public Schools’ Association that took him from Rochdale to Manchester.

The diary makes fascinating reading, such as an entry for the weekend of 28 to 29 July 1849 when he stayed at his mother’s home in Rochdale.

In an entry for Sunday 29 July he wrote: "After breakfast we went to Daly’s. I proposed a stroll to the hills. He accepted and off we went, calling for Brierley, a young printer, on the way.

"We took the road over Cronkeyshaw and thro’ Syke, Buckley Wood, Ridings, Wardle between the hills to Middle Wood and High Shore and down by Rake Foot.

"Went down to Caldermoor to the Dog and Partridge Inn (now the Caldermoor) and talked about the cholera which is ravaging some parts of our great towns."

  • The Diary of Edwin Waugh is available at George Kelsall’s bookshop in Littleborough.
  • The Edwin Waugh Dialect Society aims to maintain and increase an interest in the Lancashire dialect. Meetings are on the second Wednesday of each month (October to April) at Jarvis Street Methodist Church, Rochdale, 7.30pm. Admission is free. Contact Jim Parker on 358842. The society also has its own website www.edwinwaughdialectsociety.com