John Bolton Rogerson

He worked in a mercantile firm and afterwards with a solicitor in Manchester; kept a bookshop from 1834 to 1841; contributed to newspapers, and subsequently engaged in journalistic and other enterprises.

Around 1840 he became part of a collective of working class poets known as the Sun Inn Group, which met regularly at a pub on Long Millgate in Manchester.

As editor of Oddfellows' Magazine from 1841 until 1848, he gave a number of Sun Inn Group members—including Isabella Banks—their first paid poetry commissions.

He was editor of the Falcon, or Journal of Literature in 1831, Oddfellows' Magazine from 1841 until 1848, and the Chaplet, a Poetical Offering for the Lyceum Bazaar in 1841 (all published in Manchester).

In the succeeding year he was awarded a government pension of £50; then he retired to the Isle of Man, where he died on 15 October 1859, and was interred at Kirk Braddan, near Douglas.