Author: [AIKIN (John)]:
Title: Essays on Song-Writing: With a Collection of such English Songs as a most eminent for Poetical Merit. To which are added, Some Original Pieces.
Description: London: Printed for Joseph Johnson...[no date], [1772]. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 186 x 113 mms., pp. xvi, 280, contemporary tree calf, gilt border on covers, rebacked, new red morocco label; large triangular piece cut from title-page with loss, facsimile of title-page tipped in. This work is usually attributed to John Aikin (1747 - 1822), a physician and author of various political and biographical works. The genesis of this book came, Aikin says in his Preface, when he and various friends lamented the absence of a good collection of the excellent songs in which song-writing was taken seriously as an art form: "The chief sources of good songs, are the miscellany poems and plays from the time of Charles the second to the conclusion of Queen Ann's reign." He was working in London in 1769-70 and moved to Warrington in 1771, and he might have made the acquaintance of the radical publisher, Johnson, during his brief sojourn in London. His political leanings were liberal, and Johnson published his An Address to the Dissidents of England on their Late Defeat (1790).

Keywords: song music literature


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