The Guitar in Victorian England
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- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Publication date:
- June 2025
- June 2025
- ISBN:
- 9781009053884
- 9781316511800
- Dimensions:
- (244 x 170 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 0.6kg, 244 Pages
- Dimensions:
- Weight & Pages:
- Subjects:
- Music, Music Performance, Nineteenth-Century Music
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- Music, Music Performance, Nineteenth-Century Music
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Book description
In 1893 Clara Lindow sang the ballad Dreamtide to her own guitar accompaniment in the Cumbrian hamlet of Lowick. A writer for the local newspaper not only admired her 'marked skill and ability' but also considered the concert to be a sign of 'the onward march of light and learning in our time'. Amateurs like Miss Lindow were at the heart of a Victorian revival of guitar playing, especially for accompanying the voice, which has never been fully acknowledged and has often been denied. This book is a ground-breaking history of the guitar and its players during the era when the Victorians were making modern Britain. The abundant newspaper record of the period, much of which is now searchable with digital tools, reveals an increasingly buoyant guitar scene from the 1860s onwards. No part of Victorian life, from palace to pavement, remained untouched by the revival.
Reviews
‘Christopher Page, in his exemplary, well-documented and exceptionally well-written book, gives a vivid, more nuanced and complete picture of the guitar's place in Britain's social and cultural life during a period with great differences in living conditions between the elected and the poor without a social safety net. At the same time, there was an energetic development in many areas of social life. Particularly interesting are Page's in-depth studies focusing on the guitar in the contemporary press, court records, etc. during the Victorian era, which provide new and important perspectives.’
Kenneth Sparr Source: Gitarr och Luta
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