I have found (on’t ‘tinternet) 1875 and 1879 for sale (£24 – £35) but no 1878.

This is a working class dialect almanac produced (written?) by James Burnley of Bradford. Though I had not come across this publication, or James Burnley, there is a lot about him out there, this is just a sample;

Increasingly, literary historians are finding forgotten writers from the Victorian era who appear to represent very contemporary concerns. The massive biographies of the great nineteenth century novelists and social critics repeatedly bring to light other, secondary figures on the literary scene who have a profound interest to us now.

Surely, one of these has to be the social critic, journalist and poet, James Burnley. In an age when new enquiries into our sense of region and belonging are being made at an accelerating rate, we should look into his life and achievement. In an anthology published in 1891, he was celebrated as ‘The Saunterer’, and in Bradford history, that is his famous nom de plume. He was a friend of Dickens, contributing to All the Year Round; a local historian; a journalist with a vibrant style and a poet of the entrepreneur. His most successful book was The Romance of Modern Industry, (1889), in which he talks of ‘wealth in rubbish’ and ‘men who have risen’.

Burnley was born in Shipley, near Leeds, in 1842 and began his long publishing career in 1869 with a volume of poems, Idonia. But his talents also extended to the composition of plays, pantomimes, sketches and serious poetry. He became well-known in the West Riding when he began to write as the Saunterer for the Bradford Observer, covering such topics as folklore, eccentrics, scandals, superstitions and of course, literary and cultural matters. He also wrote for the Leeds Mercury and after a series of books celebrating the ‘romance’ of Britain’s industrial achievements, wrote a History of Wool and Wool-Combing.

66 pages, last 12 adverts this copy has magic tape repair to spine is complete and tidy. I am asking £15 for this piece of West Riding History.

The adverts themselves give an example of life (well) before the NHS, how more graphic can an advert get “DO NOT LET YOUR CHILD DIE”