• RRP: £25.00
• Format: 350 x 241 mm (13 x 9 1/2 in)
• Pages: 356
• Weight: 1.7 kg (4 lb)
• Pictures: 200 b/w, 125 colour
• Binding: Hardback with jacket
• ISBN: 978-0-7181-2448-5
• Publication: 1988

Songs and Their Stories
This unique and delightful songbook, compiled and presented by modern music hall artistes, is meant to be used. Each song is reproduced from the original Victorian song sheets, with piano accompaniment and words large enough to be read by a fair-sized gathering behind the piano stool. The book is illustrated and decorated in the elaborate style so beloved by the Victorians. It features more than 300 photographs, engravings, paintings and other period illustrations and a full accompanying text, as well as numerous text boxes, sidebars and captions, laid out in magazine style. The Illustrated Victorian Songbook revives in all its charm and vitality the first great age of popular entertainment.

Foreword by David Jacobs

Preface

Introduction

THE DRAWING ROOM SOIREE Home! Sweet Home!
In the Gloaming
Killarney
Come into the Garden Maud
Come Home, Father
Love’s Old Sweet Song
The Baby on the Shore
Abide With Me
Eternal Father, Strong to
The Holy City
The Lost

THE STRONG AND SUPPER ERA She Was Poor, But She Was Honest
Sam Hall
Villikins and his Dinah
The Ratcatcher’s
Polly Perkins of Paddington Green

THE BLACK-FACE MINSTRELS Oh! Susanna
Beautiful Dreamer
The Gipsy’s Warning
Ring the Bell Softly
Oh, Dem Golden Slippers!

ON THE HALLS, POPULAR CHORUSES Champagne Charlie
Dear Old Pals
Two Lovely Black Eyes!
Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay
Daisy Bell
Oh! Mr Porter
The Lily of

ON THE HALLS, CHARACTER SONGS The Flying Trapeze
The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte
If It Wasn’t for the ’Ouses In Between
It’s a Great Big Shame!
She Was One of the Early Birds
Wot Cher!
My Old Dutch

THE HEIGHT OF SENTIMENT After the Ball
The Boy in the Gallery
Are We to Part Like This?
When the Summer Comes Again
The Coster’s Serenade
A Bird in a Gilded Cage
Sweet Rosie O’Grady

RAMPANT PATRIOTISM Macdermott’s War Song
Comrades
The Soldiers of the Queen
Good-bye Dolly Gray

EVERGREENS The Londonderry Air
Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes
Annie Laurie
The Ash Grove
Heart of Oak
Rule Britannia
Sally in Our Alley

SONGS FROM THE SHOWS I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls
Then You’ll Remember Me
The Moon Has Raised Her Lamp Above
I Am the Ruler of the Queen’s
A Wand’ring Minstrel I
The Amorous Goldfish
The Honeysuckle and the Bee

Bibliography

Sources of Music in This Book

Picture Credits

Acknowledgements

Index

Aline Waites, actress, comic and playwright, has written or co-written at least 25 musical plays and revues. For many years she and her partner, Robin Hunter, collaborated on scripts for plays, revues and musical theatre of all kinds, and together they wrote The Illustrated Victorian Song Book.

Robin Hunter(1929-2004) was a skilled and versatile performer and writer in the field of musicals, music hall and comedy. The son of the actor Ian Hunter, he appeared in many film and television roles such as Up Pompeii, the Carry On films, Sherlock Holmes and Poirot, and performed in several musicals including Damn Yankees. He was a talented playwright and wrote comedies such as Botome’s Dream in which Shakespeare is put on trial for plagiarism, and Aladdin & His Microsoft Compatible Floppy Drive Laptop.

INTRODUCTION
The Victorians brought in the mass-produced upright piano and the harmonium, the popular hymn and the sentimental ballad. And from the fairgrounds, the pubs and the music halls there came that other tradition, the popular sing-along of the Victorian working class.

Victorian – what does that word conjure up today? To some people it means puritanical, prejudiced, stuffy, respectable; whereas mention Victorian music hall to those same people and they think of rude songs and Marie Lloyd. The patriot will think longingly of the glorious age of the British Empire, and the social historian will remember the enormous gap between rich and poor, the rise of the middle classes, the triumph of the factory system, the squalid social conditions as described by Dickens, Thackeray and Henry Mayhew.

The extraordinary diversity of those quick changing times was mirrored in the music, and a book on popular Victorian songs has to spread its net wide in order to create a true picture.

TA-RA-RA-BOOM-DE-AY!
The Nineties certainly came in with a bang – perhaps we should say with a boom! A whole generation of people were bent on kicking over the traces and fighting to escape Victorian restraints and they adopted Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! as their theme song. The song caused a sensation when Lottie Collins sang it in Dick Whittington at the Grand Theatre, Islington. With the chorus she did an “Abandon” dance “after the French Style” which consisted of a whole series of dramatic high kicks – not easy in a long skirt, tight stays and a large feathered hat. She was encored again and again, sometimes fainting in the wings from sheer exhaustion.