Irish Literature · Victorian Music · Manuscript Provenance
Thomas Moore — Irish Melodies, with Edmund Edmunds Family Inscription
Hutchings & Romer, London · Undated Victorian edition · Inscribed 1950
Catalogue details
Description
Victorian red-cloth edition of Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies, with a remarkable later family inscription recording a tradition that the professional singer Edmund Edmunds had been invited to sing Irish melodies to Thomas Moore himself. This encounter is recorded in the inscription but is not independently verified.
- Date
- Undated Victorian edition; inscription dated 1950
- Place
- London (publisher); Irish literary subject
- Country
- United Kingdom / Ireland
- Author
- Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
- Title
- Moore's Irish Melodies
- Arrangements
- Sir John Stevenson and Sir Henry Bishop
- Publisher
- Hutchings & Romer, London (9 Conduit Street)
- Binding
- Red cloth, front board with gilt title
- Pagination
- Index includes page references to 234
- Dimensions
- Measurements gladly provided on request
- Reference
- TBH-IRL-BOOK-MOORE-EDMUNDS
- Condition
- Please consult the photographs for condition. Additional photographs are available on request.
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Historical context & sources
A family tradition of singing to Thomas Moore
This copy preserves an extended handwritten dedication, apparently addressed to Mr and Mrs Alan Starkey and signed Garnett Edmunds, conveying good wishes for 1950. Its writer identifies his grandfather as Edmund Edmunds, giving his dates as 1809–1900, and records that he “had also the honour of being invited to sing some Irish melodies to Tom Moore an event which he recalled with pleasure and gratification”. This is a later family recollection, not contemporary documentary proof of the meeting.
Identification of the singer
Edmund Edmunds (born 1809) is independently documented as a nineteenth-century tenor and singing teacher, active in the British musical world and subsequently in Edinburgh. Biographical material gives his death as 1892, rather than the 1900 inscribed here. The family relationship of the inscriber and the reported occasion before Moore remain to be independently verified. The names in the dedication and its separate memorial reference to 1948 are transcribed provisionally.
Book and music
The title page identifies symphonies and accompaniments by Sir John Stevenson and Sir Henry Bishop. Hutchings & Romer's London imprint appears beneath. The contents include enduring Moore songs such as The Last Rose of Summer, The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls and The Minstrel Boy. The gilt-titled red cloth volume preserves an unusually evocative association with the early reception and performance of Moore's Irish songs.
Collecting interest
Irish literature, nineteenth-century song, musical performance, manuscripts and family provenance. The book is offered with clear distinction between documented musician biography and the unverified performance tradition preserved by the later inscription.
