RITSON, Joseph. Ancient Songs and Ballads from the Reign of King Henry the Second to the Revolution. Two volumes. London: Payne and Foss, 1829. WITH:

-----. A Select Collection of English Songs, with their Original Airs: and a Historical Essay on the Origin and Progress of National Song. Three volumes. 8vo., uniformly bound by Hayday in full near-contemporary polished calf, spines richly gilt, green labels, marbled edges and endpapers. London: Payne and Foss, 1829.

A valuable and highly interesting reference work in the field of music, beautifully bound in nineteenth-century polished calf.

Ad 1: "The most curious and certainly the most interesting to antiquarian readers of all Ritson's works" (Lowndes). Second and best edition, revised from the original 1790 edition (one volume only). Features Ritson's lengthy introduction (103 pp) and a separate short introduction to each piece.

Ad 2: Second and best edition, an enormous contribution to the study and collection of English ballad literature, not least due to the author's lengthy preliminary essay (98 pp); the entire third volume contains early musical notations. The Critical Review, a journal usually hostile to Ritson, conceded that the work "has given us more satisfaction than any other production of the remarker on Warton, and is not a little curious, entertaining, and instructive."

Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), vegetarian, barrister, political radical, and eventual lunatic, is best remembered for his work in antiquarian literature, chiefly in popular poetry and song. He remains infamous as a vicious critic of his scholarly contemporaries. His own scholarship of historical poetry was based upon extensive knowledge and years of historical research; prior to his descent into insanity, he produced the most complete and most exacting works on ancient poetry hitherto.

PROVENANCE: Thomas Brooke, F.S.A., Bart., of Armitage Bridge (Huddersfield, Yorkshire) with his exlibris. Brooke (1830-1908), a passionate bibliophile and connoisseur, was an early owner of, i.a., the famed Pillone Library (see the two-volume Catalogue of the manuscripts and printed books collected by Thomas Brooke, FSA, and preserved at Armitage Bridge House, London, 1891). He was a descendant of an ancient Yorkshire family which had carried on the cloth trade in the area continuously from the days of Henry VIII. The business John Brooke & Sons of Armitage Bridge Mills is reputed to be the oldest family business in Britain.

See DNB and also B.H. BRONSON, Joseph Ritson: Scholar-at-Arms (1938).