Ben Preston

Ben Preston (1819–1902) was the Bradford poet who rose to local fame with "Natterin' Nan", first printed in a Bradford journal in 1856; a first edition of his poems followed in 1860. F. W. Moorman ranks him first among the poets of the artisan towns of Bradford, Leeds and Halifax.

His best pathos draws on the life of the handloom weaver in the "hungry forties", and Moorman holds "I Niver can call Her my Wife" to be his masterpiece. The three poems here come from Moorman's Yorkshire Dialect Poems (1916).