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.
Brief description: Christopher Page is Emeritus Professor of English in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. He writes on the social and musical life of the guitar in England from the 1500s onwards. The Guitar in Tudor England (Cambridge, 2015) won the Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize of the American Musical Instrument Society in 2017.