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Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers 46, Great Russell Street Telephone: 020 7631 4220 (opp. British Museum) Fax: 020 7631 1882 Bloomsbury, Email: [email protected] London WC1B 3PA VAT.No.: GB 524 0890 57 CATALOGUE CCII SPRING 2013 STREET LITERATURE III. SONGSTERS, STREET LITERATURE REFERENCE SOURCES, LOTTERY TICKETS & ‘PUFFS’ Catalogue: Helen Smith Production: Carol Murphy All items are London-published and in at least good condition, unless otherwise stated. Prices are nett. Items on this catalogue marked with a dagger (†) incur VAT (current rate 20%) to customers within the EU. A charge for postage and insurance will be added to the invoice total. We accept payment by VISA or MASTERCARD. If payment is made by US cheque, please add $25.00 towards the costs of conversion. Email address for this catalogue is [email protected]. JARNDYCE CATALOGUES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE, price £5.00 each include: Dickens & His Circle; Catalogue 200: A Miscellany; Women II-IV: Women Writers A-Z; The Dickens Catalogue; The Library of a Dickensian (£20); Social Science, Part I: Politics & Philosophy; Part II: Economics & Social History; The Social History of London; Books & Pamphlets of the 17th & 18th centuries; Street Literature: II Chapbooks & Tracts. JARNDYCE CATALOGUES IN PREPARATION include: Romantics I: A-C (Byron, Coleridge, etc.); Conduct & Education; Books from the Library of Geoffrey & Kathleen Tillotson; PLEASE REMEMBER: If you have books to sell, please get in touch with Brian Lake at Jarndyce. Valuations for insurance or probate can be undertaken anywhere, by arrangement. A SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE is available for Jarndyce Catalogues for those who do not regularly purchase. Please send £20.00 (£30.00 / U.S.$55.00 overseas, airmail) for four issues, specifying the catalogues you would like to receive. SONGSTERS, STREET LITERATURE REFERENCE SOURCES, LOTTERY TICKETS & ‘PUFFS’ ISBN: 978 1 900718 93 6 Price £5.00 Cover illustration, Item 237: The Honest Ballad Singer. Brian Lake Janet Nassau CATALOGUE 202.indd 1 20/03/2013 16:04:42 STREET LITERATURE: III. Songsters, Street Literature Reference Sources, Lottery Tickets & ‘Puffs’. INTRODUCTION This is the third and last in a series of three catalogues. The first was published in 2007 - Broadsides, Slipsongs and Ballads, the second in 2008 - Chapbooks and Tracts. Much of the Songster material on this catalogue comes from the collection of Leslie Shepard; his obituary published in The Independent in September 2004 is reprinted below. The Reference section of the catalogue derives from the collections of both Shepard and Victor Neuburg; a brief biography of the latter is also printed here. Concluding the catalogue is an impressive collection of Lottery Tickets and ‘Puffs’, mainly from the collection of Anne and Fernand Renier. LESLIE SHEPARD 1917-2004 (By R. Dixon Smith) Leslie Shepard, film-maker and collector, writer and editor, once wrote, ‘I am rather like the young hero in Stephen Leacock’s story who leapt on his trusty steed and galloped madly in all directions!’ Of the many diverse aspects of his life, it was for his devotion to early cinema, however, that he was best known. Shepard’s film collection was as renowned as his various book collections, for he owned numerous early titles generally unavailable elsewhere. (A collection of material relating to Shepard’s involvement with film is item 649 on this catalogue.) Unlike many collectors, however, he was immensely generous in sharing his rarities, and enriched the lives of hundreds of collectors throughout the world. ‘It gives me great pleasure’, he maintained. He was born in 1917 in West Ham, London, leaving the Day Continuation School for Commercial Subjects in 1933. His passion for cinema had begun early, from experience with 9.5mm film and Pathé’s library of abridged classics, and from having been taken to see F.W. Murnau’s 1926 Faust at a local picture palace; he remembered its full orchestral accompaniment for the rest of his life. In 1941, he joined Paul Rotha Productions, working in the cutting room; while there, he met the legendary German screenwriter Carl Mayer. A conscientious objector during the Second World War, Shepard served on a Civil Defence stretcher party. He embraced no formal religion but was sympathetic to the basic truths of many religions, and was a self-described ‘unpolitical humanitarian’. Later, instead of Christmas cards, he would send chapbooks to his many friends - short monographs on such topics as yoga, economic perils or ‘The Search for Wisdom’ (the last originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day in 1977). From 1942 to 1944 Shepard was assistant organiser and scriptwriter of a bi-monthly newsreel for the Ministry of Information. He helped found Data Film Productions, London, serving from 1945 to 1948 on its board of management. In 1947 he became production manager for Mining Review, a monthly news film produced for the National Coal Board, and in the Fifties worked on various industrial and educational CATALOGUE 202.indd 2 20/03/2013 16:04:42 films for industry and the Central Office of Information. He became production controlling officer and supervisor of documentary films and Public Service Television items for BBC and independent television. He collaborated with the German singing teacher Alfred Wolfsohn, with whom in 1956 he issued an LP on the Folkways label in America, Vox Humana, on extending human vocal range and interpreting its psychotherapeutic effects on dramatic performance. In 1958 Shepard studied yoga, Hindu metaphysics and Indian classical music in India, where he lived for six months in a scorpion-infested temple on the banks of the Ganges River. Yoga exercises were undertaken to repair his lungs, which had been damaged when he worked as a young man in an asbestos warehouse. The following year he was cinematographer, cook and carpenter in an unsuccessful attempt to cross the Atlantic in a 28ft cutter via the Viking route, the earliest sea route to America. Shepard’s literary and publishing career was just as diverse. In 1965-66 he was London Editor for University Books, New York, for whom he wrote forewords, prefaces and introductions to more than 70 books. For Gale Research Company, Detroit, he served as editor and researcher from 1966 until the end of his life. The books he edited on Hinduism played a significant part in the welfare of the Hindu community in the United Kingdom. Publications edited by Shepard include The Dracula Book of Great Vampire Stories (1977), Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology (1978), Living with Kundalini: the autobiography of Gopi Krishna (1993) and Dracula: celebrating 100 years (1997). His own works include The Broadside Ballad: a study in origins and meaning (1962), John Pitts, ballad printer of Seven Dials, London, 1765-1844 (1969) and The History of Street Literature (1973). Shepard founded the Bram Stoker Society and co-founded the Standing Committee of Jews, Christians and Muslims. He spoke at ecumenical conferences, was for many years a lecturer on silent cinema, and assisted as researcher for several silent-film documentaries produced by Kevin Brownlow, David Gill and Photoplay Productions. He was a lifelong bibliophile, his library including a unique collection of broadside ballads and related ephemera. And he was an early British populariser of the Kentucky mountain dulcimer: his lecture ‘John Jacob Niles, American Folk Singer’ was broadcast in 1963 by the BBC’s Third Programme (see item 655). VICTOR NEUBURG 1924-1996 Victor Neuburg was born in Steyning, Sussex and educated at the University of Leicester where he received the degree of M.Ed. in 1967. He worked as Senior Lecturer in the School of Librarianship, Polytechnic of North London, and was General Editor of the Woburn Press series of reprints The Social History of Education. Neuburg spent some time as Visiting Professor in Buffalo, New York and in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1984-85 he was Samuel Foster Haven Fellow of the American Antiquarian Society. His Fellowship publication was ‘Chapbooks in America’, in Reading in America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, edited by Cathy N. Davidson. He was author & editor of, or contributor to, over twenty publications, relating to bibliography, to his interest in military history, and - principally - on the history of chapbooks, popular literature and education. CATALOGUE 202.indd 3 20/03/2013 16:04:42 2 CATALOGUE 202.indd 4 20/03/2013 16:04:43 SONGSTERS ‘Songster’ is often used by historians of performance to describe a published collection of song lyrics, usually without music. This definition does not occur in the O.E.D. which confines itself to defining a human or avian singer, or poet, and is still reconsidering its definitions. We have found the earliest usages in a title where ‘songster’ may have changed its meaning: Ladies delight: or, The merry songster. Containing a collection of above one hundred songs ... of 1741 and also a subtitle using Universal songster in 1742. Whether and when there is a transference of meaning needs further investigation. A definition on Wiktionary states that the usage as a songbook is American. This section of the catalogue is devoted to songbooks of all kinds - a large part of Shepard’s accumulation of broadside songs still remains to be catalogued. Here we mostly list publications of three or more songs, including traditional folk songs and ballads in broadside collections, collections with music published for early glee clubs, theatrical and pleasure garden compilations and tavern singing collections (the forerunner of music hall performances) and songs for special groups. More modern collections are influenced by the growth of piano ownership, the advent of the gramophone and the activities of political and other organizations. Shepard made a special effort to collect contemporary publications in the ‘songster’ tradition. All items reflect the human pleasure in singing together.