The desire to have a
share in the movement became more and more urgent, and when the West
Riding joined in, it was inevitable that it should widen the scope of
dialect poetry both in spirit and in form.
A West Riding dialect literature seems to have arisen first of all in
Barnsley and Sheffield in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century.
Between 1830 and 1834 a number of prose "conversations" entitled, The
Sheffield Dialect.' Be a Shevvild Chap, passed through the press. The
author of these also published in 1832 The Wheelswarf Chronicle, and in
1836 appeared the first number of The Shevvild Chap's Annual in which the
writer throws aside his nom-de-plume and signs himself Abel Bywater.
This annual, which lived for about twenty years, is the first of the many
"Annuals" or "Almanacs" which are the most characteristic product of the
West Riding dialect movement. Their history is a subject to itself, and
inasmuch as the contributions to them are largely in prose, they can only
be referred to very lightly here. Their popularity and ever-increasing
circulation is a sure proof of their wide appeal, and there can be no
doubt that they have done an immense service in endearing the local idiom
in which they are written to those who speak it, and also in interpreting
the life and thought of the, great industrial communities for whom they
are written.
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