Know Your Audience (Mass Media) Part 2

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Why This Matters

It’s interesting to see how newspaper publishers diversified, producing books and booklets – and even music – for their readership. They advertised other publications within the pages of these booklets. The same practice is of course observed inside and on the back covers of sheet music. Indeed, James S. Kerr sometimes advertised along the bottom of a page of printed music.

In the case of John Leng, it gives a glimpse into the kind of readers they were aiming their publications at, and underlines the importance of music in their lives – specifically Robert Burns’s songs, national songs and dance tunes.

Our Wi-fi was down for 14 hours, and the household was plunged into the depths of despair. (I only slightly exaggerate.) But more to the point, all the detailed text of today’s blog post was trapped on my laptop and couldn’t be transferred to the blog.

(Three adverts in four pages – and not the last you’ll encounter, for this most popular of magazines!)

‘Life is made lightsome with a song’

In my earlier post, I promised I’d share details of John Leng & Co.’s advertising strategy, as observed in their booklet, The Songs of Burns – so here we are.

The Songs of Burns is a booklet that I bought purely out of curiosity; I was interested in their support of Scots Song singing through the Dundee Leng Medal prizes, and I wondered if books like this showed another aspect of that interest. I  think the only link is probably that Scottish songs in general, and Burns’ songs in particular, were just  popular all ways up, so this pamphlet wouldn’t have struggled to find purchasers. As the advert on the back cover says, ‘life is made lightsome with a song’.

Tucked in amongst the Burns songs, are the little column adverts and bigger full-page ones, which clearly indicate which publications they were pushing, around January 1905. Many of the adverts are distinctly aimed at women, which is interesting, considering Burns’s songs are of universal appeal.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this post, much use was made of ‘Aunt Kate’ for good, sensible advice from a trustworthy auntie!

Moreover, I find it interesting that there’s more marketing for the People’s Friend than the People’s Journal. The magazine is still running, whilst the journal ceased in January 1986 – so even the journal had a good long life.

The People’s Penny Burns

Inside cover: Full page advertisement for its earlier companion, The People’s Penny Burns

p.48    Another full page advertisement for The People’s Penny Burns.

The People’s Penny Stories

p.3      Do you like a good novelette? You do. Well, don’t miss The People’s Penny Stories. Every month. One Penny. None so good. 

The question is followed by a firm affirmative answer.  Since my own People’s Friend serial ended up as no.393 in the ‘People’s Friend Story Collection’  back in the 1990s, I am naturally disposed to agree, stressing that this is light fiction, not literature!

p.29    A second advertisement for the People’s Penny Stories series.

Caring

Baby drawing by Mary Mapes Dodge, Wikimedia
Drawing by Mary Mapes Dodge, Wikimedia

p.1      A LOVING MOTHER’S NEGLECT to rear healthy babies is unpardonable. Aunt Kate’s Mother’s Guide contains much useful information, and anyone who follows its advice will have healthy families. Sold by all Newsagents; Price ONE PENNY. 

Taking an indisputably moral tone, the assurance that ‘anyone who follows its advice’ will flourish would probably flout advertising standards today, since some problems simply cannot be put right merely by following sound advice!

p.15    Have you a home pet? If so, and you would like to make the most of it, for its own sake and your own, invest a penny in Aunt Kate’s Canaries and Home Pets. Also uniform in size, style, and price, The People’s Dog Book.

Clothing the Family

p.5      Aunt Kate’s Knitting and Crochet Book contains over 170 Patterns. Price One Penny.  (Believe me, this was an absolute bargain!)

p.30    Young Mothers will find the People’s Friend Paper Patterns invaluable.  Complete Layette Sets at low prices.  Baby’s First Garments, Shortening Clothes, Outdoor Things, Christening Robes, Sleeping and Day Gowns, Newest Bonnets, Hats and Bibs for Young Children of all ages. For styles for spring, summer, autumn and winter, see People’s Friend Fashion Pages. 

(Get the paper patterns, or look in – where else, but the People’s Friend?  It has to be said that nowadays, the Friend is unashamedly aimed at grandmothers rather than young mums.)

p.41    Make your own Clothes.  Full directions how to cut dresses and other garments in AUNT KATE’S DRESS-MAKING BOOK. Price one penny; sold everywhere.

Feeding the Family

p.9      Aunt Kate’s Cookery Book is the best pennyworth in the world. If you have not a copy get one.

Entertainment

p.11    ‘AUNT KATE’S SCOTTISH SONGS’ Nos.1 and 2, and the ‘PEOPLE’S ENGLISH SONGS’ Contain the Cream of our National Minstrelsy. Each comprises nearly half a hundred Songs – Words and Music. The Price of Each is One Penny.

And they soon appeared, together with Welsh songs, in two hardbacked collections. These song books are advertised again on the back cover, see below.

This was, of course, the age of Tonic Sol-Fa, and many schools taught it, so there was a good chance that at least some of the readers of these books could work out a tune from Sol-Fa.  The piano accompaniment, however, required someone who could read music.  These accompaniments are simple and functional, rather than artistic, but they’re certainly usable. The arranger was a local Dundee music teacher who also wrote for John Leng & Co. Ltd.

Back cover: Life is made Lightsome with a Song: an unparalleled Quartet … ‘Music in each case in staff and sol-fa. One penny each. Sold by all newsagents.’

This is a whole page advert for the books in the smaller  column advert on p.11.

  • Aunt Kate’s Scottish Songs No.1: 46 ‘gems of Scottish Song’
  • The People’s English Songs: 46 ‘popular English ballads’
  • Aunt Kate’s Scottish Songs No.2: 46 Scottish and Gaelic ‘lyric gems’
  • The People’s Welsh Songs: Words in English and Welsh

Inside back cover – advertisement for ‘Simply Indispensible! Four Valuable Books [one penny each]:-

  • Conjuring and Parlour Magic Book: Aunt Kate’s Parlour Magic Book
  • Parlour Games for Everybody: a Companion to Aunt Kate’s Conjuring and Parlour Magic
  • The People’s Fortune Teller
  • Aunt Kate’s Dance Music ‘contains music for no fewer than twenty-six popular dances’ (there’s a little more about this book in another blog, Unsung Histories, Sept 2021, by Katie Howson.)

The People’s Friend

p.14    WHY NOT JOIN A CLUB? The Helper’s Club, conducted by Janette in the “People’s Friend”, is a National Bureau for the exchange of opinions, advice, and experiences among women of all classes.

p.16    Everyone praises the wholesome tone that characterizes every page of THE PEOPLE’S FRIEND.

p.17    A FRIEND INDEED is just what the People’s Friend has all along proved itself to be. No one who has ever known this “Friend” has turned his or her back upon it.  It contains something for everybody.  Ask your Newsagent to introduce you to the “Friend”; it will cost you a Penny, but you’ll find it worth the money over and over again.

p.25    Tribute to the PEOPLE’S FRIEND […] A miscellany which finds its way into many homes where good reading is courted. It has been a real influence in Scottish life, brightening it, and that must be a chief joy to Sir John Leng. – Daily Chronicle, London. 

p.35    Quoting Mr T. P. Connor speaking highly of the People’s Friend and People’s Journal, we find another mention of the Friend and a second of the Journal.

p.47    Space at the bottom of the Table of Contents – filled with a larger advertisement for The People’s Friend, quoting press opinions.

Men’s Stuff?

p.21    If your husband, son or brother wants the best book on a good subject, he should buy – HOW TO READ, WRITE, AND DEBATE. It costs One Penny, and is full of valuable hints to all who desire to become good writers and debaters, and who wish to make the best of their reading.

The People’s Journal

p.23    POINTS about the PEOPLE’S JOURNAL. 10,000 Newsagents sell it.  1,250,000 People read it.  A week’s issue weighs 20 tons.  It is the People’s Family Newspaper. Sold everywhere, price one penny. 

Know Your Audience (Mass Media) Part 1

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Why This Matters

The advertisements in this little poetry booklet would be called ‘paratext’ by book historians. Paratext is anything around the text that forms the main body of a book. So the title page, index, contents pages, a preface or introduction – or advertisements for other publications – all count as paratext. It tells us more about the motivation of a publisher, what else they were publishing around the same time, and what they thought their readers would be interested in.

This was how John Leng & Co., of Dundee and Fleet Street, London, advertised their new booklet in  The Forfar Herald on Friday 20 January 1905:-

“THE SONGS OF Burns.—Messrs John Leng & Co., Ltd., have in their latest penny booklet, entitled The Songs of Burns, published what should be specially attractive to many at this time of the year, in view of the approaching anniversary of Burns’ birthday. Most of the well-known songs are included, and an alphabetical table of contents is also printed. It is a good pennyworth.”

That one penny (one-twelfth of today’s modern 5p and equating to about 55p using the Bank of England’s Inflation Calculator), was certainly affordable!  The Songs of Burns was sensibly and conveniently published just before Burns’ Day – 48 pages including an index and a full page advertisement for another of their publications. 

It’s just a book of verses – no music.  It was intended to be a companion to an earlier collection, The People’s Penny Burns (‘a splendid selection from the poems of Scotland’s national bard’), the same size and price.

No surprises as to the contents, then, but what caught my eye was actually the column advertisements. The publishers wasted no opportunity to advertise other publications that the reader might find interesting! Skimming through them enables us to profile the readership very clearly: largely women, concerned with feeding, clothing and amusing their families, and looking after the household pets.  ‘Aunt Kate’ was the branding John Leng used for many such publications – a homely and mature voice that readers could trust.

Meanwhile, women are advised that their menfolk should buy a booklet on effective reading, writing and debating. Of all the advertisements in this particular booklet, that’s the only ad for a title specifically aimed at men:-

How to read, write, and debate …

We have no wi-fi today, so I’m going to stop here for now.  When I  return,  we’ll have a paratextual wander through the 48 pages of John Leng’s The Songs of Burns, and I’ll show you how Leng did their advertising!

(Contextual note: If you’re not well up on newspaper publishing history, I should explain that D C Thomson later acquired John Leng & Co. Ltd, so there’s a direct lineage to today’s The People’s Friend, Sunday Post and Scots Magazine. The People’sFriend goes back a very long way.) 

The People’s Song Book No.2 (published by John Leng)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It stands to reason. If I’m researching the John Leng Scots Song competitions, then I might also be interested in this firm’s publications. Not, of course, that there’s any direct link between Leng’s trust fund and the firm’s later publications.  They published general material, magazines and newspapers, and only a handful of music titles.  However, this means that what music they did publish would be of a kind suited to the mass market. 

‘For the people’

Is it any surprise that, amongst the ‘Aunt Kate’s’ housekeeping and embroidery books, there might also be dance music and national songs? Which of course indicates their recognition of how popular national songs actually were.

The mythical ‘Aunt Kate’ enjoyed a song!

This week, I bought the second volume of The People’s Song Book, published in 1915. It’s quite an attractive little book, containing 32 Scottish, 33 English, 35 Irish and 34 Welsh songs.

There’s also a section with 32 of the now distasteful genre of ‘minstrel’ songs at the back – blackface minstrelsy, not the homegrown wandering minstrel variety. They are described more insultingly than that, as was the unfortunate custom of that era.

Curiously, these are indicated as a third series of English songs, lower down the page.  (The second series appeared after the Scottish songs.  Remember, this was the second book, so the ‘first series’ of English songs is presumably there.)

Today, we recognise the English and American origins of the minstrelsy repertoire, but I doubt the compilers were hinting at that.  I have written at some length about such songs in my recent monograph – what’s in the present book is no different to those in the collections I’ve already examined.

Notwithstanding this – because we have to recognise that the book is a product of its age, whatever our more informed modern opinion – it would be a strange scholar that acquired book 2, but wasn’t curious about book 1, so I’m excited now to be repatriating the first volume from Virginia.  Perhaps some expat took it with them in their trunk, or had it sent to them as a keepsake?  And now it’s coming home – it feels appropriate.

First song in the 2nd book – emigration!

The funny thing about Virginia  – on a completely unrelated note – is that, a quarter of a century ago, I attended a librarianship interview in Richmond. I didn’t succeed  – but I did start my doctoral studies at home in Glasgow, a year or two later.  None of what I’ve subsequently done, would have been done at all, if I’d become yet another emigrant like those of a century before.

And now a little national song book is making its way home to me.  I’ll be sure to make it welcome!

And More?

Book 1 may answer an intriguing question that arose yesterday. I’m impatient!

Related Post:

You may also like to read my blog post of 20 March, Repatriated to the UK: the first People’s Song Book

Book: A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Wavy lines of music and an artistic interpretation of a fiddle

Folks, I’ve just noticed Routledge has a 20% summer sale on at the moment.  So, if you or your library could use a copy, this might be a good time to get it!  (All books and e-books are 20% off until 1 August 2025.)

The accent is on social history and Scotland – and music-making, obviously. I’m keen to hear what readers think of it. (If you are a reviews editor, do get in touch with Routledge. There’s a link on the website.)

  • Amateur music making
  • Scottish music publishing
  • Scottish and Irish songs
  • Fiddle tunes and dance music
  • Preserving the heritage and passing it on
  • Nostalgic Scots abroad
  • Newfangled technology

Routledge link

Karen E McAulay,  A Social History of Amateur Music-Making: Scotland’s Printed Music 1880-1951 (Routledge, 2005) 

ISBN 9781032389202
220 Pages
Published October 30, 2024 by Routledge

How to Catch a Song Book in the Wild

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

As regular readers will know, my IASH Fellowship concerns the history of the Nelson’s Scots Song Books.

I’ve seen all four of the teacher’s books in libraries; and possess one teacher’s edition of my own, plus one pupil’s edition – not the same volume number.  And I’m going to some lengths to track down the other three of each edition.  I want to be able to show them when I talk about them, so I simply must keep looking.

Today, I headed to town, feeling as though I ought to be riding a pony and tootling a hunter’s horn, to the sound of La Chasse or the William Tell Overture.  (The heavens opened between subway and second-hand bookshop, somewhat spoiling my fantasy. Urghh!)

But hunting with a pack of hounds would have been no good at all, for you have to creep up on these rare beasts very, very softly. Pretend to be looking at something else, as you slowly extend your arm towards the shelf. And then, whilst it’s relaxed with its defences down, grasp it quickly and hold on tight.

Captured!

I examined it disbelievingly.  Yes! I now have the teacher’s edition to go with my pupil’s edition of Vol.2. (Actually, I also found some other useful material that wasn’t published by Thomas Nelson.)

And then I turned round.  On a table, if you please, there sat another Nelson music book that I’ve been reading about. Not a song book, but interesting just because it was published around the same time, by the same Nelson editors.  It was as though it was waiting for me to find it.

Did I celebrate with a coffee? Now, what do you think!

Fame! Flora Woodman and Robert Wilson under the Spotlight

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’m giving a paper at a forthcoming conference at the University of Surrey: Actors, Singers and Celebrity Cultures across the Centuries.

It takes place from tomorrow, Thursday 12 to Saturday 14 June 2025, and is organised under the aegis of the University’s Theatrical Voice Research Centre.

My talk’s entitled, ‘Comparing the Career Trajectories of Two Scottish Singers: Flora Woodman and Robert Wilson‘. 

The Gowns! The Kilts!

I could write plenty about their concert attire alone (think lace, diamonds and fluted frocks, or smart kilts and jackets) – but obviously, I can only just brush past that particular clothes rail, considering the more significant observations that I’m also making.

Boosey’s Ballads

Today, I’d like to share some audio that won’t be making it into my talk. Let’s call it ‘extra content’.  I’ve recorded some of the Boosey-published ballads that Flora performed at their Royal Albert Hall concerts.  Since I’m not a trained singer, I’ve done my best to convey an impression solely on the piano.  (I’m not going to start singing here!)  I also highlight some of the themes in these songs – captured hearts, broken hearts, the joys of spring and of youth.  It’s surprising what you find, if you really look.

Here goes:-

Now published in History Scotland, Spring 2025: The ‘Scottish Soprano’ and the ‘Voice of Scotland’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The Scottish Clans Association of London badge, on background of Mackinnon tartan

Sadly, this is the last issue of History Scotland, but I’m very pleased to have an article published there. I have really enjoyed writing this, and I think my idea of comparing two very different Scottish singers has actually come together rather well.  I wanted to write about Robert Wilson, but I didn’t want to go over the same ground that has already been covered.  I also wanted to write about Flora Woodman – but would anyone remember her? Then came the inspiration: what if I wrote about them both, two almost contemporary but very different celebrities, and then I could compare them.  This hadn’t been done before! And it worked  – the piece almost wrote itself.

Karen E McAulay, ‘The ‘Scottish Soprano’ and the ‘Voice of Scotland’: the Importance of Nationality to Flora Woodman and Robert Wilson’, History Scotland Vol.25 no.1 (Spring 2025), 74-81

If your public library has e-magazines, you’ll be able to read it online. Glasgow Life certainly has it!

Flora Woodman – photo and compliments, 25th October 1924

A Gift Idea? A Social History of Amateur Music-Making

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Stumped for a present for your Scottish music enthusiast? My new book is affordable as an e-book! (Just sayin’ …)

A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music 1880-1951

Why did Scottish music publishers produce so many songbooks and dance tunes? Who took Scottish music overseas to the diaspora? How did classical composers interact with local publishers?

I’ve discussed all this and more. Full details on the publisher’s page, link above.

Monday 11th November: Exchange Talk & Book Launch

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Venue: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland,  Glasgow

Please watch this space!

On Monday 11th November at 6 pm, I’m giving a talk in the well-established and popular RCS Exchange Talk series, where scholars talk about their latest research. I’ll be talking about a song book compiled for the Festival of Britain:-

The Glories of Scotland in Picture and Song: compiling a book with the 1951 Festival of Britain in mind

It’s in the Fyfe lecture theatre. There will be ONLINE BOOKING for this lecture. This will be the link:- https://www.rcs.ac.uk/whats-on/exchange-talk/book/507006/

At 7 pm we’ll have the launch of my new book, in the library. No online booking for the book launch, but if you’re hoping to attend, please do let me know, so we have an idea of numbers.

You can attend both, or either event.

McAulay,  Karen E., A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music, 1880-1951 (Routledge, October 2024) 🎶

A book is born

The Sweetest Words (to an Author)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I just received an email containing the sweetest words!

“We will proceed with the final production and notify you when the book is delivered from our end.”

Does this mean – the End is Nigh?! (As far as my second monograph goes, at any rate!)

A Social History of Amateur Music-Making and Scottish National Identity: Scotland’s Printed Music, 1880–1951

Not long now!

I knew there was this vast mass of cheap, popular music books, many containing what used to be called ‘national songs’, dating back to the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th. I decided a book needed to be written, and wrote it. I can’t wait for it to make its entry into the world!