Home from Stirling – after the Conference

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Stirling University Campus - photo from Pixabay

Conference: Reading and Book Circulation, 1600-1800

I am just back from a fabulous library history conference at the University of Stirling. Even better still, I was the lucky recipient of a generous bursary from the CILIP Library History & Information Group, meaning my attendance was fully funded.

I had many pages of notes to read through and reflect upon before I wrote my report – so many excellent papers to think about. My AHRC networking grant not so long ago was about music in libraries ca.1790-1836, and although I’m currently writing about more recent music publications, it was very interesting to see what else was happening whilst “my” legal deposit library music was being accumulated in libraries in England, Ireland and Scotland.

‘Claimed from Stationers’ Hall’ frock makes a comeback for the conference!

And of course, there was the networking. After the pandemic, lockdown, working from home, hybrid working and so on, it was quite a treat to be able to spend time with kindred spirits for two whole days!

My report will appear in the LIHG Newsletter in June 2023 – it’ll appear online on the LIHG pages hosted by CILIP. This might mean that only members can read it, but maybe I can write a summary of it to share here, once the whole report has gone live.

Image of Stirling University Campus by 昕 沈 from Pixabay

Do You Own This Songbook?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Song Gems (Scots) front cover
Song Gems (Scots) whole cover

If you’ve visited this blog before, you’ll know I’m writing a history book about Scottish music publishers. (58,000 words and rising!) But I’ve reached a point where I’m writing about a book COMPILED by Scots, PUBLISHED in England, but also DISTRIBUTED from Edinburgh and Boston, Massachusetts.

I know a lot about the anthology (as I should – I’m writing about it!), but I’m curious about its life in the Scottish diaspora – in other words, anywhere else in the world where Scots emigrated.

The Boston agent of the book was Thomas J. Donlan. His address was Room 831, Colonial Building, 100 Boylston Street, Boston. He moved to New York some time between 1910-1915.

Song gems (Scots) : the Dunedin collection

Authors: James Wood, Learmont Drydsdale

Print Book, English, 

Publisher: Vincent Music Co, London, 1908

WorldCat bibliographical details

Now, I know from WorldCat and Jisc Library Hub Discover, that there aren’t many copies in libraries. My interest is more to see if there are many copies out ‘in the wild’ in people’s homes, and obviously it would be nice to discover that Mr Donlan imported and distributed lots of them. It was more of an ‘art music’ book than a book of simple folk melodies. The repertoire is non-standard. You’d probably have owned a piano, and been quite a good pianist – or had a good pianist to accompany your singing.

I’m not looking to buy copies – my own came from a dealer under 40 miles from Boston, and I don’t need another! I’m not a bookseller. I am literally just curious to find out if there are many survivors hiding in piano stools and under-stair cupboards. If you’ve got a copy, I’d love to hear from you!

Maybe you haven’t got this book, but you know more about Donlan the agent? If you are aware of archival data, please do let me know. My book is about Scottish publishing, but there’s room for a paragraph or two about the American distributor, if more information came to light. (I’ve already discovered that Colonial Building also housed the Colonial Theatre, and that there were a lot of music shops along the street – indeed, I know which organisation occupied room 831 after Donlan, and that’s another fascinating story, but really I can’t pursue that – it has nothing to do with Scottish music publishing!)

POSTSCRIPT, July 2024. This song-book is the subject of a chapter that I have contributed to an essay collection published by Lang, that is due out later this year.  It also gets mentioned in my own forthcoming monograph, again due out later this year. Do follow this blog if you want to keep updated!

Saturday dawned, and a research question was bothering me …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Old music card catalogue at Mitchell Library, Glasgow

So I decided to spend the afternoon at the Mitchell Library. Glasgow is so fortunate to have this wonderful collection!

I saw the two publications I had in mind. I took notes. I even had time to look at the card catalogue. (Catalogues are great research tools, even though I am personally sick of actually cataloguing.)

And then I went home. It was only when I went over my notes that I realised I had missed at least one item in the bibliography of one book, which I thought I had been looking out for. I spent the next 24 hours kicking myself, determined to go back to find that elusive reference if it killed me.

And then my librarian self remembered the advice I often give students. If you have copied out a useful snippet, put it into Google Books, in speech marks. Like this:-

“Reader, I married him”

(Try for yourself – it’s a quote from Charlotte Bronte.)

Often enough, Google Books will retrieve 2-3 lines including the words you copied, telling you the book where it found the text – and the page number.

I searched on the book abbreviation for the missing reference, and found I’d missed three! However, I have now traced them, and all is well. All for research into a publisher who only caught my interest two weeks ago.

‘Spreading the Word’: article by Lionel Gossman

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Sometimes there are times when you know you should read something, but you worry it might not be directly relevant to your work – or you suspect you’ll spend too much time on something that may only be of tangential interest.

Today was not one of those times, though.  After a couple of days off for home improvements, I decided that what I really needed this morning, to ease myself back into a research frame of mind, was to sit and focus on something which might not mean much note-taking, but was certainly of background interest.  Indeed, it even touched my interest in copyright history, albeit not music copyright. 

And that’s how I found myself reading online – for I couldn’t justify printing out 170-odd pages – this very readable article about Scottish book publishers:-

Gossman, Lionel. “Spreading the Word: Scottish Publishers and English Literature 1750-1900.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 109, no. 2, 2020, pp. iii–161. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45381452. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.

Dance Instruction and Dance Etiquette

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Pocket-size instructions, a dance-card, and a mouse – just for size comparison!
Mozart Allan’s dance instruction book, Allan’s Ball-Room Guide, early 1900s. Just the right size for a breast pocket, same as a dance card. And here you also see a dance card from the Caledonian Society of Aden, Yemen, produced for St Andrew’s Day 1959 (nothing to do with Mozart Allan) – so you can compare them for size.

Mind you, the Society had a very traditional programme of dances, didn’t it? Mozart Allan would’ve known at least half the dances listed!

(Featured top image: No spitting on the carpet, please, gents – it’s a sure sign of low breeding!)

Weekends are Dangerous

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

There’s going to be a lot of activity at my front door in the next few days. I confess I had a spending spree. First, I ordered new, not-terribly-exciting organ music (needs must, but not my own taste!) … and then I had to console myself with some old Mozart Allan scores. Ironically, I won’t be playing a couple of them publicly, but I feel I can’t write about delicate, topical issues without seeing these old scores for myself. Not out of any remote sense of liking them, but because it wouldn’t be right to address the issues without knowing exactly what the publications are like. No second-hand, reported commentary for me.

To counterbalance those, I ordered some Scottish piano tunes and an advertising brochure which has to come all the way from Canada. These will give me considerable pleasure!

Books and Book Borrowing: Research led by Stirling University

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

If you were involved with, or followed the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall copyright music project, then news of this project led by the University of Stirling will probably also interest you.

Books and Borrowing 1750-1830: An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers’ Registers

Here’s how the project is introduced:-

“Our project uncovers and reinterprets the history of reading in Scotland in the period 1750 to 1830. Using formerly unexplored (or underexplored) borrowing records, we are [ … ] creating a valuable new resource that will reveal hidden histories of book use, knowledge dissemination and participation in literate culture.”

I’ve been invited to contribute a blogpost about the lady musicians of St Andrews, so watch this space … !

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

So they say! Very well, but whatever the era, and the differing nuances in the contents, there’s no denying tartan was often used as a cover for books of Scottish songs, Scottish poems, stuff by Robert Burns, stuff by Walter Scott (there was a firm specialising in miniatures, like this picture of Scott’s The Lady in the Lake ballad, no music here) …

Book History: Scottish Airs in London Dress

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Before establishing the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall network, I was a postdoctoral researcher on the Bass Culture project, which looked at Scottish fiddle tune collections largely from the Georgian era.  In that context, I read a paper at Musica Scotica in Spring 2014, about a couple of London-published music collections.  It has finally been published in Scottish Music Review Vol.5 (2019), 75-87, this week.

Sometimes when we look back at earlier work, we wonder if we’d have written it differently today, but I’m still pretty happy with this article.  If anything, I think it justifies my claim that the history of this kind of collection does indeed deserve to count as “book history”, even if it is music rather than literature. So, here it is for your enjoyment:-

Scottish Airs in London Dress: Vocal Airs and Dance Tunes in Two Eighteenth-Century London Collections

Networking With Other Networks: Romantic National Song Network (Scotland)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Flower tile cream turquoiseAs I’ve mentioned recently, this is another network with which I’ve been involved.  Last week, the new website of the Romantic National Song Network was launched – and yesterday, my contributed guest blogpost about a Scottish song – Afton Water – went live. It draws heavily on my doctoral research into Scottish song-collecting, but I like to think that my present interest in the wider context (collecting, publishing, curating) has also influenced my approach.  I was certainly very glad of the National Library of Scotland’s Digital Gallery, which I can’t praise enough!

So here’s my blogpost:-

Romantic National Song Network – Scotland

My own personal thanks to Special Collections and Archives at James B. Duke Library, Furman University (Greenville, SC), for supplying one of the images used in my guest blogpost.