His mother was the daughter of Jonathan Priestley of Dronfield and she gave birth to Arthur in Sheffield on 7 March 1772.
At the end of his apprenticeship on his twenty-first birthday, 7 March 1793, he married Martha Sheldon of Crooke's Moor, Sheffield.
In July 1817 he commenced The Northern Star, or Yorkshire Magazine, a monthly register of arts, biography, statistics, manufactures, &c., which ran to three volumes, 1817–18.
On 1 January 1818 he brought out the first number of The Sylph, or Lady's Magazine for Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and the adjoining Counties.
He also wrote Peak Rhapsody a moving tribute to the land where the purple heather the thyme & bilberry grow together.