Papers of the Lancashire dialect poet Frederick Rose, who published under the pseudonym, Mick O'Pleasington.
The archive contains two files of research notes relating to a study of the Blackburn dialect entitled 'Lancashire Dialect - Our Heritage: A Study of the Blackburn Dialect 1920-1960'. Included are photocopies of the author's handwritten poems as Mick o'Pleasington written between 1960 and 2006. The collection also includes two audio compact cassette tapes of the author reading his own poems, plus an extensive alphabetical list of Lancashire dialect vocabulary as used in his poems complete with definitions, which will prove invaluable to future students of dialect. Present also is a small pamphlet with a collection of dialect poems written by the author as Mick o'Pleasington titled Swillin't'flags, illustrated by his daughter Margaret Sargent.
Research papers in the archive contain sections on the influences on the author's interest in Lancashire dialect by way of introductions to local poet William Billington, and Father Francis Irwin, an early authority on the local Lancashire dialect. There is also a short paper studying Nicholas Freestone, a Lancashire dialect poet contemporary to Rose. The first of the two files is completed by a collection of photocopied, card-mounted and laminated newspaper cuttings of poems by Mick o'Pleasington that appeared in the local Lancashire press between 1966 and 2004, and other written and press correspondence that related to dialect generated during the author's lifetime. The copies of written correspondence include letters dating from 1981 between Rose and BBC announcer and personality Stuart Hall, who became the subject of a song written by Rose with his son Peter. Other copy correspondence includes a letter dated 1966 from Labour MP Barbara Castle, then Labour Minister for Transport, regarding a poem Rose had written to highlight the dilapidated condition of Hoghton railway station near Blackburn.