John Roby (5 January 1793–1850) was an English banker, poet, and writer. Roby was born in Wigan, England in 1793, the son of Mary Aspull and a schoolmaster named Nehemiah Roby.^[1] He began his career as a banker in Rochdale, Lancashire. In his work Lancashire Sketches, Edwin Waugh recalled that, while Roby was working for the firm of Fenton and Roby in Rochdale, Waugh worked as an apprentice at the bookshop next door.