Ballad Partners are delighted to announce our newest book, Collectomania! Revisiting the Folk Song Collectors. This collection includes ten papers from the major Collectomania conference organised by the Traditional Song Forum and the English Folk Dance and Song Society, held in London in 2024. It includes the keynote papers from Brian Peters on Cecil Sharp and … Read more
The team of Steve Roud and David Atkinson has been busy again and have two new books to their credit.First up is Vaughan Williams and Folk: 150th Anniversary Essays, a selection of papers presented at last year’s EFDSS conference to celebrate 150 years RVW’s birth, with reprints of other key material by him and others. The cost … Read more
News of two new books from The Ballad Partners. First off the stocks is Vaughan Williams and Folk: 150th Anniversary Essays, Edited by Steve Roud and David Atkinson. A selection of essays celebrating Ralph Vaughan Williams’ lifelong involvement with folk song and music, as collector, editor, arranger, and composer. Many of them were first presented at the … Read more
Jill Bennett and Elizabeth James have been studying the detail of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ visit to King’s Lynn in January 1905 for some years, and this book is the result of that work. The book is published in a large A4 format containing the songs collected on that visit as well as details of the … Read more
The latest volume from TSF’s companion organisation, The Ballad Partners, is a collection of 12 chapters, based on presentations given at Traditional Song Forum Zoom meetings over the past couple of years, and is a particularly strong set of papers, including topics from England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada and the USA. It is called Thirsty Work and … Read more
The full title of Caroline Davison’s new book is The Captain’s Apprentice, Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Story of a Folk Song and is a detailed account of the song. There is a lot of new information about Vaughan Williams’ visit to King’s Lynn, where he met the singer, Duggie Carter as well as ….. well, lots … Read more
The Ballad Partners have issued the third volume in their series on Cheap Print and Street Literature, based on papers presented at the annual BROADSIDE DAY conferences. The new title is A Notorious Chaunter in B Flat and Other Characters in Street Literature, edited by David Atkinson & Steve Roud (Pbk. 193pp., ISBN 978-1-9161424-4-2) £13 (plus … Read more
News from Julia Lane of a book that has just been published, “Bygone Ballads from Maine Vol.1-Songs of Ships & Sailors”, compiled by her and Fred Gosbee. It is over 300 pages and contains 163 songs with both lyrics and tunes plus relevant historic information and lore. Both soft and hardcover editions are available from … Read more
A new book, The Secret Stream, has just been published by Francis Boutle. It is the first of two volumes dedicated to songs collected from English Gypsies. It brings together over a hundred mostly unpublished folksongs, tunes, and carols, as well as songs in the Anglo-Romany tongue, collected from English Gypsies by Victorian and Edwardian collectors … Read more
The Ballad Partners are pleased to announce the publication of a new book, The Forgotten Songs of the Upper Thames, Folk Songs from the Alfred Williams Collection edited by Martin Graebe. Between 1914 and 1916 the writer and poet, Alfred Williams, cycled 13,000 miles around the Upper Thames Valley to collect the words of nearly 800 songs from … Read more