Today Vincent Novello (1781-1861) is remembered as the father of the music-publishing firm. Fiona Palmer's evaluation of Novello the man and the musician in the marketplace draws on rich primary sources. It is the first to provide a rounded view of his life and work, and the nature of his importance both in his own time and to posterity. Novello's early musical training, particularly his experience of music-making in London's embassy chapels, influenced him profoundly. His practical experience as director of music at the Portuguese Embassy Chapel in Mayfair informed his approach to editing and arranging. Fundamental moral and social attitudes underpinned Novello's progress. Ideas on religion, education and the function of family and friendship within society shaped his life choices. The Novello family lived in turbulent times and was widely-read, discussing politics and religion and not only the arts at its social gatherings. Within Vincent and Mary Novello's close circle were radical thinkers with republican views - such as Leigh Hunt and Charles Cowden Clarke - who saw sociability as a means of reorganizing society. Thematic studies focus on Novello as practical musician and educator, as editor, and as composer. His connections with institutions such as the Covent Garden and Pantheon Theatres, the Philharmonic Society and Moorfields Chapel, together with his adjudicating and teaching activities, are examined. In his wide-ranging editorial work Novello found his true vocation positioning himself as preservationist, pioneer and philanthropist. His work as composer, though unremarkable in quality, mirrored the demands and expectations of his consumers. Novello emerges from this study as a visionary who single-mindedly pursued greater musical knowledge for the benefit of everyone.

This collection of essays by some of the leading scholars in the field looks at various aspects of musical life in eighteenth-century Britain. The significant roles played by institutions such as the Freemasons and foreign embassy chapels in promoting music making and introducing foreign styles to English music are examined, as well as the influence exerted by individuals, both foreign and British. The book covers the spectrum of British music, both sacred and secular, and both cosmopolitan and provincial. In doing so it helps to redress the picture of eighteenth-century British music which has previously portrayed Handel and London as its primary constituents.

Revising traditional 'rise of the nation-state' narratives, this collection explores the development of and interactions among various forms of local, national, and transnational identities and affiliations during the long eighteenth century. By treating place as historically contingent and socially constructed, this volume examines how Britons experienced and related to a landscape altered by agricultural and industrial modernization, political and religious reform, migration, and the building of nascent overseas empires. In mapping the literary and cultural geographies of the long eighteenth century, the volume poses three challenges to common critical assumptions about the relationships among genre, place, and periodization. First, it questions the novel’s exclusive hold on the imagining of national communities by examining how poetry, drama, travel-writing, and various forms of prose fiction each negotiated the relationships between the local, national, and global in distinct ways. Second, it demonstrates how viewing the literature and culture of the long eighteenth century through a broadly conceived lens of place brings to the foreground authors typically considered 'minor' when seen through more traditional aesthetic, cultural, or theoretical optics. Finally, it contextualizes Romanticism’s long-standing associations with the local and the particular, suggesting that literary localism did not originate in the Romantic era, but instead emerged from previous literary and cultural explorations of space and place. Taken together, the essays work to displace the nation-state as a central category of literary and cultural analysis in eighteenth-century studies.

The Reader's Guide to British History is the essential source to secondary material on British history. This resource contains over 1,000 A-Z entries on the history of Britain, from ancient and Roman Britain to the present day. Each entry lists 6-12 of the best-known books on the subject, then discusses those works in an essay of 800 to 1,000 words prepared by an expert in the field. The essays provide advice on the range and depth of coverage as well as the emphasis and point of view espoused in each publication.