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John Rastell

John Rastell (or Rastall) (c. 1475 – 1536) was an English printer, author, member of parliament, and barrister.

Life
Born in Coventry, he is vaguely reported by Anthony à Wood to have been "educated for a time in grammaticals and philosophicals" at Oxford. He became a member of Middle Temple, and practised as a barrister, but established a printing business in London c.1512. He also devised pagaentries for the king. Amongst works he published, in a preface to Liber assisarum et placitorum corone (1514?) he announced the forthcoming publication of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert's Abbreviamentum librorum legum Anglorum, dated 1516. Among the works issued from the "sygne of the meremayd at Powlysgate," where he lived and worked from 1520 onwards, are The Mery Gestys of the Wydow Edyth (1525), and A Dyaloge of Syr Thomas More (1529). The last of his dated publications was Fabyl's Ghoste (1533), a poem. In 1529 he became M.P. (Member of Parliament) for Dunheved, Cornwall

In 1530 he wrote, in defence of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, A New Boke of Purgatory (1530), dialogues on the subject between "Comyngs and Almayn a Christen man, and one Gyngemyn a Turke." This was answered by John Frith in A Disputacion of Purgatorie. Rastell replied with an Apology against John Fryth, also answered by the latter. Rastell had married Elizabeth, sister of Sir Thomas More, with whose Catholic theology and political views he was initially in sympathy. More had begun the controversy with John Frith, and Rastell joined him in attacking the Protestant writer, who, says John Foxe (Actes and Monuments, ed. G Townsend, vol. v. p. 9), did so "overthrow and confound" his adversaries that he converted Rastell to his side.

Separated from his Catholic friends, Rastell does not seem to have been fully trusted by the opposite party, for in a letter to Thomas Cromwell, written probably in 1536, he says that he had spent his time in upholding the king's cause and opposing the pope, with the result that he had lost both his printing business and his legal practice, and was reduced to poverty. He was imprisoned in 1536, perhaps because he had written against the payment of tithes. He probably died in prison, and his will, of which Henry VIII had originally been appointed an executor, was proved on 18 July 1536. He left two sons: William Rastell and John Rastell the Younger, the latter of whom accompanied Richard Hore on his ill-fated expedition. The Jesuit, John Rastell (1532-77), who has been frequently confounded with him, was no relation.

The Pastyme of People (1529)
Rastell's best-known work is The Pastyme of People, the Chronycles of dyvers Realmys and most specially of the Realme of England (1529), a chronicle dealing with English history from the earliest times to the reign of Richard III, edited by Thomas Frognall Dibdin in 1811.

Legal works: Abbreviacion (1519) and Expositiones (1527)
His best known legal works are The Abbreviacion of Statutis (1519) and Expositiones terminorum legum Angliae (1527). The original Law French edition of the Expositiones did not appear again. However, in 1567 it was translated into English as Expositions of the terms of the laws of England. Many editions then followed over the next 150 years. After 1620, the Expositions was known as Les Termes de la Ley.

The Four Elements (circa 1519)
Rastell was also the author of a morality play, A new Interlude and a Mery of the Elements, or The Four Elements written about 1519, which is no doubt the "large and ingenious comedy" attributed to him by Wood.

The unique copy in the British Library is incomplete, and contains neither the date nor the name of the author, identified with John Rastell on the authority of John Bale, who catalogued Natura Naturata among his works, adding a Latin version of the first line of the piece. This interlude was printed in William Carew Hazlitt's edition of Dodsley's Old English Plays, by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps for the Percy Soc. (Early English Poetry, vol. 22, 1848), and by Julius Fischer. See also an article by Henry R. Plomer, who unearthed in the Record Office an account of a lawsuit (1534–35) in connection with Rastell's premises at the "Mermaid". For the books issued from his press see a catalogue by Robert Proctor, in Handlists of English Printers (Bibliographical Soc., 1896).

Printer of music
He was also the first English printer of polyphonic music, which he began issuing in the 1520s. The practice of printing music from a single impression i.e. using pieces of type that print staves, notes and text together, was apparently first practiced by Rastell in London about 1520. Two different broadside songsheets printed by him survive, dated to about 1523; two survivals of ephemeral unbound works from such an early date suggest that he may have printed a considerable amount of music. The texts are in English, suggesting they were for the local market, not export. After his death, the musical type were acquired by John Gough.

title: John Rastell


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Ernest John Moeran

Ernest John Smeed Moeran (31 December 1894 – 1 December 1950) was an English composer whose work was strongly influenced by English and Irish folk music of which he was an assiduous collector. His output includes orchestral pieces, concertos, chamber and keyboard works, and a number of choral and song cycles as well as individual songs.

The son of a clergyman, Moeran studied at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford before service in the army during the First World War, in which he was wounded. After the war he was a pupil of John Ireland, and quickly established a reputation as a composer of promise with a number of well-received works. From 1925 to 1928 he shared a cottage with the composer Peter Warlock; the bohemian lifestyle and heavy drinking during this period interrupted his creativity for a while, and sowed the seeds of the alcoholism that would blight his later life. He resumed composing in the 1930s, and re-established his reputation with a series of major works, including a symphony and a violin concerto. From 1934 onwards he spent much of his time in Ireland, mainly in the coastal town of Kenmare.

In 1945 Moeran married the cellist Peers Coetmore, and for her he composed several works for cello. The marriage was not destined to last, and Moeran's final years were lonely. He died at Kenmare on 1 December 1950, having fallen into the water after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage. A second symphony was left unfinished at the time of his death. Composer Anthony Payne declared that "Moeran occupied a minor place in the music of his time, but his meticulously polished and ready technique is unsurpassed among his British contemporaries. This craftsmanship is evident in the clarity of his textures and processes, and in the superb sonority of his orchestral writing".

Early life
Moeran was born on 31 December 1894, at the Spring Grove vicarage, Heston, Middlesex, the second son of an Anglo-Irish clergyman, The Rev. Joseph William Wright Moeran, vicar of St Mary's, Spring Grove, and Ada Esther Smeed, née Whall, who came from Norfolk. Joseph subsequently served in several country parishes in southern and eastern England, including Salhouse in Norfolk, before his retirement on health grounds when Ernest was 13. The household was cultured; Ada was a  talented pianist and singer, and Ernest began music lessons from the age of five or six. His initial education was under a governess at home, after which, in 1904, he attended Suffield Park preparatory school in Cromer. In 1908 he went to Uppingham School, where he studied music under Robert Sterndale Bennett, grandson of the composer William Sterndale Bennett. He became a proficient pianist, and learned the violin sufficiently to be able to perform in chamber groups; he also began to compose. In 1913 he entered the Royal College of Music (RCM), initially as a piano student, but switching to composition under Charles Villiers Stanford after his first year. He also became a member of the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club, an important body whose members included Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth and Adrian Boult; Parry and Elgar were honorary members. A few sketches of piano compositions attempted in this prewar RCM period survive in manuscript form.

First World War
Moeran was 19 when his studies at the RCM were interrupted in August 1914 by the outbreak of the First World War. He enlisted as a motor cycle dispatch rider in the 6th (cyclist) battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, and the following year was commissioned second lieutenant. He did not altogether abandon his musical activities; on leaves in Norfolk, he began to collect folk music. In early 1917 his unit was sent to France, and on 3 May, during the Second Battle of Bullecourt, he received a wound in the head. According to several accounts, this wound required emergency surgery, including the insertion of a metal plate into the skull, and commentators have attributed Moeran's later instabilities and erratic behaviour, and his eventual development of alcoholism, to the primitive surgery and after-effects of this wound. However, other evidence suggests that the wound was less severe, that no metal plate was necessary, and that he made a rapid recovery. He was reported, in August 1917, as performing a very demanding piano piece at a London concert, indicating that he was in a reasonable state of fitness at that time.

After a period of convalescence he returned to military duty, and saw out the rest of the war in Ireland, at Boyle, County Roscommon, attached to a transport section of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He used this period in Ireland to engage with his Irish roots, and spent time collecting  folk songs. In London, just before his discharge from the army in January 1919, Moeran met the composer Arnold Bax, who described him at that time "as charming and as good-looking a young officer as one could hope to meet".

Emerging composer
Following demobilisation in January 1919, Moeran returned to England. Some accounts report that he was briefly employed as a music master at his old school, Uppingham, but there is no evidence from the school for this. He appears to have returned to Ireland for a while before resuming his studies at the RCM, under John Ireland. His association with the RCM did not last long, but he continued to receive tuition in composition from John Ireland in a private capacity. Moeran's biographer Geoffrey Self observes that from this point "the main influences to be heard in his music were now in place: his teacher, his Irish and East Anglian heritages, and his love of rural England."

An allowance from his mother relieved Moeran from the necessity of earning a living, and with this financial independence he was able to devote his time to study and composition. The Oxford & Cambridge Musical Club gave him the means by which his works could be performed. In five productive years following the end of the war, he established his reputation as a composer with a steady stream of works across a range of genres. According to the critic Herbert Foss, these early pieces display a fluency that was often absent in later years. They include numerous songs, a number of piano and chamber works and, on a larger canvas, his first attempts at orchestral writing, the symphonic In The Mountain Country and two Rhapsodies. These early orchestral pieces indicate the influences of Delius and Vaughan Williams, but also demonstrate the emergence of a distinct, individual voice.

During this period, Moeran collected many folk tunes from rural pubs in Norfolk. His contribution to this area of work was recognised in 1923, when he was elected to the committee of the Folksong Society. As his reputation grew, he formed important friendships with leading figures on the musical scene, among whom was Hamilton Harty, who conducted a performance of Moeran's second orchestral Rhapsody and afterwards commissioned a symphony from the young composer. Moeran struggled with this challenge, but at this stage in his career was unable to deliver to his own satisfaction, and the project was set aside for the time being. Another important friendship formed around this time was with the writer, critic and composer Philip Heseltine (better known by his pseudonym Peter Warlock), Moeran's exact contemporary and like him a prolific songwriter. Heseltine was a great admirer of Moeran; in a 1924 review of the latter's early work, he wrote: "[T]here is no British composer from whom we may more confidently expect work of sound and enduring quality in the next ten years than from Jack Moeran; there is certainly no one of his years who has as yet achieved so much".

Heseltine and Eynsford
The friendship between Moeran and Heseltine deepened, and in 1925 they rented a cottage at Eynsford in Kent, together with the artist Hal Collins. The cottage attracted many visitors from the musical and artistic worlds, and soon became notorious as a centre for wild parties and other extravagances, involving heavy drinking. The excessive alcoholic consumption seemed to have little effect on Heseltine, who continued to work productively, but the opposite was true of Moeran, whose creativity soon began to suffer. He found it difficult to cope with the distractions provided by the cottage; his compositional output tailed off and finally ceased altogether, and he dropped out of the London musical scene, no longer attending the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club. Furthermore, he was falling into alcoholism, and was also under the spell of Heseltine's stronger personality. Moeran later admitted a loss of faith in his abilities, finding that the longer he delayed, the harder it was to resume work.

The few works completed during the Eynsford years (1925–1928)  include  his single collaboration with Heseltine, a drinking song called "Maltworms", written for performance at a drama festival at the nearby village of Shoreham. Heseltine wrote a tune for the first two lines, Moeran continued with the next lines, and so on. Parts were scored for the village brass band, but in the event the song was withdrawn from the festival and the band parts have been lost, but a piano-accompanied version survived and was performed in the village pub.

Moeran left the cottage in 1928, but the effects of his alcoholism remained. In August 1929 he was fined £10 by the Watford magistrates for being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle; that same year he went with Heseltine and others to France, ostensibly to meet Delius. The trip degenerated into a drunken binge, during which Moeran passed out in the street. When Heseltine died in December 1930, probably by his own hand, Moeran was devastated. He wrote to Heseltine's mother: "His loss will mean a terrible gap to me when I get back to normal life and find he is no longer there".

Re-establishment
After leaving Eynsford, Moeran returned to his parents' home and began to pick up the threads of his compositional career. He had not been entirely forgotten by the musical establishment; in January 1930, the critic Hubert Foss wrote a reappraisal of Moeran's earlier works, referring to the composer's "over-long silence", but saw hope for the future: "One hopes that out of this corpus of early works a symphonic mind may grow, one that with intensity of form as well as intensity of utterance, will give us real music on a big scale".

An accident early in 1930 led to a period of convalescence which provided an opportunity for Moeran to reconsider his style. Gradually, new works were forthcoming: the Sonata for two violins (1930), the String Trio (1931), two orchestral pieces – Wythorne's Shadow (1931), and Lonely Waters (1932). A choral work, Songs of Springtime, a setting of seven Elizabethan poems, followed in 1933. Wythorne's Shadow was written possibly as a memorial for Heseltine. Several songs, including a cycle of six Suffolk folksongs, indicated the continuing importance of folk music to Moeran, and in 1931 he rejoined the committee of the Folksong Society. He also wrote some sacred music, to which he attached little value – "this tripe for the church", he called it, adding that he only did it for the money.

Moeran led an itinerant life in the 1930s, staying at his parents' various homes or with friends. However, as the decade progressed, he became more interested in his Irish roots, and began to spend large parts of the year in a cottage in Kenmare, County Kerry, where he became a well known and popular figure; Arnold Bax recorded a local comment: "If ever there was a move to elect a mayor of this town, Jack Moeran would be everybody's first choice". The peace that he found in rural Ireland inspired him to return, in 1934, to the long-abandoned symphony project. In the midst of this burgeoning creativity, Moeran continued to experience problems with alcoholism. In January 1935 he was ordered to spend nine months in a nursing home, having been found guilty in Cambridge of being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle. This interrupted but did not derail his work on the symphony, which was finally completed in 1937 and received its premiere in January 1938 in the Queen's Hall, under Leslie Heward. Heward went on to make an acclaimed recording of the Symphony with the Halle Orchestra at the end of 1942.

The years following the performance of the symphony were fruitful, and produced a number of significant works. These included the Violin Concerto (1937–41), written largely in Ireland and reflecting strong Irish influences; the madrigal suite Phyllida and Corydon (1939), possibly influenced by the music of Bernard van Dieren; the Rhapsody in F ♯ for piano and orchestra (1943), written for the pianist Harriet Cohen; the short Overture for a Masque (1944), commissioned by the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA); and the Sinfonietta (1944), inspired in part by the hills of the Welsh border country in Radnorshire, the latest location of the family home.

Final years
Possibly as early as 1930, Moeran had met the cellist (Kathleen) Peers Coetmore. In 1943 they renewed their acquaintance, and a relationship developed, which inspired two of Moeran's important late works: the Cello Concerto (1945), and the Sonata for Cello and Piano (1947). They were married on 26 July 1945. Although the marriage brought Moeran some initial happiness and stability, Coetmore's ambitions, and the demands for her services, meant that they were often apart, and the relationship became increasingly strained. Moeran was drinking heavily, which led to further estrangement. By 1949, when Coetmore departed for an extended tour of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, the marriage was effectively over.

Moeran produced three further late works: the Fantasy Quartet for oboe and strings (1946), written for Leon Goossens; the orchestral Serenade in G (1948), and a final song collection, Songs from County Kerry (1950). Throughout these years he struggled to complete a second symphony, and although he composed a large part of this work, he was repeatedly dissatisfied with the results. In 1949 he was under further treatment for alcoholism; the first performance of the symphony had originally scheduled for the spring of 1949 but this was put back, first until 1950 and then for a further year. In March 1950 Moeran was in Ireland, writing to Coetmore of his hopes for finishing the symphony there. He settled first in a place near Dublin, but by June he was back in Kenmare. By now his mental state was poor, and he worried that he was losing his mind. There is no record of further work on the symphony project.

On 1 December 1950, during a heavy winter storm, Moeran left his cottage and walked along the Kenmare pier, where he was seen to fall into the water. His body was retrieved; at first it was thought that he had drowned, possibly in an act of suicide, but medical evidence indicated that he had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and had died before entering the water. After a well-attended funeral he was buried in the churchyard at Kenmare.

Music
Moeran came late in the canon of last major British composers heavily influenced by folk-song and thus belongs to the lyrical tradition of such composers as Delius, Vaughan Williams and Ireland. The influence of the nature and landscapes of Norfolk and Ireland are also often evident in his music. Some of his larger-scale orchestral pieces were composed (or at least conceived) whilst Moeran walked the hills of western England, particularly in Herefordshire, and Ireland, where the grandness of the mountain ranges of Kerry inspired him greatly. Moeran was capable of conveying a wide range of emotions through his music and wasn't afraid of writing in a darker and harsher idiom when it suited him. His style is conservative but not derivative.

By Moeran's time, however, such a style was already seen as somewhat dated and he never made a big breakthrough as a composer despite the success of the sombre, Sibelian Symphony in G minor (1934–1937) that is generally regarded as his masterpiece. The Symphony stands along with the Symphony No. 1 of Sir William Walton as one of the two tightest and most controlled symphonies emanating from the British Isles of the inter-war era. The Moeran work demonstrates a robust sonata form in the first movement, along with a questioning harmonic structure, which, on first examination, may appear orthodox, but which on deeper analysis indicates the dichotomy of the interval of the fifth (which is European diatonic) with the interval of the fourth, which is both the completion of the European fifth, but also introduces the Irish dimension, in which the fourth can be the predominant interval.

Though he first received favourable critical attention for his chamber music and continued to compose significant works in this genre, his greatest achievements in general are to be found among his few large-scale orchestral works, including a Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto, Sinfonietta, and Serenade.

Moeran was very interested in "folk" music and used an extensive collection of songs that he had notated in Norfolk pubs as part of his creative material. He also made great use of Irish music. The Norfolk material can be sensed in the piano works of the early 1920s. The Irish influence is seen within the second movement of the Violin Concerto (Puck Fair at Killorglin?) and even more so in the second movement of the String Quartet in E-flat, as well as in the Cello Concerto, in which fragments of Irish music, in particular "The Star of County Down" (also used by Vaughan Williams in his Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus), are evident.

Another facet to the music of Moeran is the madrigal. He once stated to a friend that if he were ever arrested and thus forced to state his profession, he would have to say it was that of being a madrigalist. Moeran was capable of staggering harmonic invention whilst working within the madrigal form – in Spring the Sweet Spring the harmonies progress from those of the madrigal into harmonies of a jazz style reminiscent of Duke Ellington; full of contradictions and added-note chords. The Serenade, an orchestral work, evinces madrigalist harmony re-worked by Moeran into an astringent style in which acerbic tonal and harmonic patterns are grafted onto the madrigalist basis to produce music of outstanding freshness and originality that surely places Moeran into the genre of inventive twentieth-century music, rather than into the "English Pastoral School", which, in itself, is arguably a misnomer.

Although he was not by any means a prolific church composer, his Services in D and E-flat are still performed today.

Recently, there has been more interest in and many recordings of Moeran's works, but some of them, such as the songs to poems by A. E. Housman and James Joyce, still remain relatively unknown.

Over 40 of his manuscripts, including that of his unfinished Second Symphony in E-flat, were bequeathed by his widow Peers Coetmore to the Victorian College of the Arts, now part of the University of Melbourne.

Conductor Martin Yates has realised and completed the Symphony No. 2 from sketches. A recording of the work with Yates conducting the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was released in October 2011 on the Dutton Epoch label (together with the early Overture based on the G major Symphony, and Yates' own orchestration of Sarnia by John Ireland).

Symphonic

 * In the Mountain Country, symphonic impression (1921)
 * Rhapsody No. 1 in F major (1922)
 * Rhapsody No. 2 in E major (1924; rev. 1941)
 * Two Pieces for Small Orchestra (1931):
 * Lonely Waters
 * Whythorne's Shadow
 * Farrago, suite for orchestra (1932)
 * Symphony in G minor (1934–37; dedicated to Sir Hamilton Harty)
 * Sinfonietta (1944; dedicated to Arthur Bliss)
 * Overture for a Masque (1944; dedicated to Walter Legge)
 * Serenade in G major (1948)
 * Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major – unfinished; completed by conductor Martin Yates, 2011

Concertos

 * Violin Concerto (1942; written for Arthur Catterall)
 * Rhapsody No. 3 in F-sharp major for piano and orchestra (1943)
 * Cello Concerto (1945; written for Peers Coetmore)

Vocal

 * Ludlow Town, song cycle (1920)
 * When smoke stood up from Ludlow
 * Farewell to barn and stack and tree
 * Say, lad, have you things to do?
 * The lads in their hundreds
 * Seven Poems of James Joyce, (1929):
 * Strings in the Earth and air
 * The merry green wood
 * Bright cap
 * The pleasant valley
 * Donnycarney
 * Rain has fallen
 * Now, o now, in this brown land
 * Songs of Springtime, for mixed chorus (1934)
 * Nocturne, for baritone, chorus and orchestra (1934; dedicated to the memory of Frederick Delius)
 * Phyllida and Corydon, for mixed chorus (1939)
 * Four Shakespeare songs, (1940)
 * The lover and his lass
 * Where the bee sucks
 * When daisies pied
 * When icicles hang by the wall
 * Six Poems by Seumas O'Sullivan, (1944)
 * Evening
 * The Poplars
 * A Cottager
 * The Dustman
 * Lullaby
 * The Herdsman
 * ''Candlemas Eve Robert Herrick, for male voice quartet (1949)

Chamber

 * Piano Trio in D major (1920)
 * String Quartet in A minor (1921)
 * Violin Sonata in E minor (1923)
 * Sonata for 2 Violins in A major (1930)
 * Trio for violin, viola and cello in G major (1931)
 * Prelude for cello and piano (1943, published 1944, written for Peers Coetmore)
 * Fantasy Quartet, for oboe and strings (1946)
 * Cello Sonata in A minor (1947; written for Peers Coetmore)
 * String Quartet in E-flat (1949-50)

Piano

 * Three Pieces (The Lake Island, Autumn Woods, and At a Horse Fair) (1919)
 * Theme and Variations (1920)
 * On a May Morning (1921)
 * Stalham River (1921)
 * Toccata (1921)
 * Three Fancies (Windmills, Elegy, and Burlesque) (1922)
 * Two Legends (Rune, and A Folk Story) (1923)
 * Bank Holiday (1925)
 * Summer Valley (1925)
 * Two Irish Folk Songs (The White Mountain, and Irish Love Song) (1926, 1927)
 * Berceuse (1933)
 * Prelude in G minor (1933)

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title: Ernest John Moeran


text:
Quipu

Quipu (also spelled khipu) are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America.

A quipu usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings, and contained categorized information based on three variables: color, order and number. The Inca people used quipu for collecting data and keeping records, for monitoring tax obligations, for collecting census records, for calendrical information, for military organization, and potentially for simple and stereotyped historical "annales". The cords stored numeric and other values encoded as knots, often in a base-ten positional system. A quipu could have only a few or thousands of cords. The configuration of the quipu has been "compared to string mops". Archaeological evidence has also shown the use of finely carved wood as a supplemental, and perhaps sturdier, base to which the color-coded cords could be attached. A relatively small number have survived.

Objects that can be identified unambiguously as quipu first appear in the archaeological record of the first millennium AD (though debated quipu occur much earlier ). Quipu subsequently played a key part in the administration of the Kingdom of Cusco of the 13th to 15th centuries AD, and (later) of the Inca Empire of 1438 to 1533, flourishing across the Andes from c. 1100 to 1532 AD. As the region became part of the Spanish Empire, quipu were mostly replaced by European writing and numeral systems, and most quipu were identified as idolatrous and destroyed, but some Spaniards promoted the adaptation of the quipu recording system to the needs of the colonial administration, and some priests advocated the use of quipu for ecclesiastical purposes. In several modern villages, quipu have continued to be important items for the local community. It is unclear how many intact quipu still exist and where, as many have been stored away in mausoleums.

Various cultures have used knotted strings unrelated to South American quipu to record information - these include the ancient Chinese, Tibetans, Japanese, and Polynesians.

Quipu is the Spanish spelling and the most common spelling in English. Khipu (pronounced, plural: khipukuna) is the word for "knot" in Cusco Quechua. Most Quechua varieties use the term kipu.

Etymology
Quipu is a Quechua word meaning 'knot' or 'to knot'. The terms quipu and khipu are simply spelling variations on the same word. Quipu is the traditional spelling based on the Spanish orthography, while khipu reflects the recent Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift.

Purpose

The quipus held information, decipherable by officials called quipucamayocs, classified in various categories, narrated from the most important to the least important category, according to colour, number, and order.

Most information recorded on the quipus studied to date by researchers consists of numbers in a decimal system, such as "Indian chiefs ascertain[ing] which province had lost more than another and balanc[ing] the losses between them" after the Spanish invasion. In the early years of the Spanish conquest of Peru, Spanish officials often relied on the quipus to settle disputes over local tribute payments or goods production. Quipucamayocs (Quechua khipu kamayuq "khipu specialist", plural: khipu kamayuqkuna) could be summoned to court, where their bookkeeping was recognised as valid documentation of past payments.

Some of the knots, as well as other features, such as color, are thought to represent non-numeric information, which has not been deciphered. It is generally thought that the system did not include phonetic symbols analogous to letters of the alphabet. However, Gary Urton has suggested that the quipus used a binary system which could record phonological or logographic data. His student Manny Medrano has gone further to find quipus that decode to match census data. According to Martti Pärssinen, quipucamayocs would learn specific oral texts, which in relation to the basic information contained in quipu, and pictorial representations, often painted on quiru vessels, similar to aztec pictograms, related simple "episodes".

The lack of a clear link between any indigenous Peruvian languages and the quipus has historically led to the supposition that quipus are not a glottographic writing system and have no phonetic referent. Frank Salomon at the University of Wisconsin has argued that quipus are actually a semasiographic language, a system of representative symbols – such as music notation or numerals – that relay information but are not directly related to the speech sounds of a particular language, like ideograms and proto-writing.

Most recently, Sabine Hyland claims to have made the first phonetic decipherment of a quipu, challenging the assumption that quipus do not represent information phonetically. After being contacted by local woman Meche Moreyra Orozco, the head of the Association of Collatinos in Lima, Hyland was granted access to the epistolary quipus of San Juan de Collata. These quipus were exchanged during an 18th-century rebellion against the Spanish government. A combination of color, fiber and ply direction leads to a total of 95 combinations in these quipus, which is within the range of a logosyllabic writing system. Exchanging information about the rebellion through quipus would have prevented the Spanish authorities from understanding the messages if they were intercepted, and the Collata quipus are non-numeric. With the help of local leaders, who described the quipu as "a language of animals", Hyland was able to translate the names of the two ayllus, or family lineages, who received and sent the quipu. The translation relied on phonetic references to the animal fibers and colors of the relevant quipu cords.

Numeral system
Marcia Ascher and Robert Ascher, after having analyzed several hundred quipus, have shown that most information on quipus is numeric, and these numbers can be read. Each cluster of knots is a digit, and there are three main types of knots: simple overhand knots; "long knots", consisting of an overhand knot with one or more additional turns; and figure-eight knots. In the Aschers’ system, a fourth type of knot—figure-eight knot with an extra twist—is referred to as "EE". "EE" Stood for "evolutionary eddicate". A number is represented as a sequence of knot clusters in base 10.
 * Powers of ten are shown by position along the string, and this position is aligned between successive strands.
 * Digits in positions for 10 and higher powers are represented by clusters of simple knots (e.g., 40 is four simple knots in a row in the "tens" position).
 * Digits in the "ones" position are represented by long knots (e.g., 4 is a knot with four turns). Because of the way the knots are tied, the digit 1 cannot be shown this way and is represented in this position by a figure-eight knot.
 * Zero is represented by the absence of a knot in the appropriate position.
 * Because the ones digit is shown in a distinctive way, it is clear where a number ends. One strand on a quipu can therefore contain several numbers.

For example, if 4s represents four simple knots, 3L represents a long knot with three turns, E represents a figure-eight knot and X represents a space:
 * The number 731 would be represented by 7s, 3s, E.
 * The number 804 would be represented by 8s, X, 4L.
 * The number 107 followed by the number 51 would be represented by 1s, X, 7L, 5s, E.

This reading can be confirmed by a fortunate fact: quipus regularly contain sums in a systematic way. For instance, a cord may contain the sum of the next n cords, and this relationship is repeated throughout the quipu. Sometimes there are sums of sums as well. Such a relationship would be very improbable if the knots were incorrectly read.

Some data items are not numbers but what Ascher and Ascher call number labels. They are still composed of digits, but the resulting number seems to be used as a code, much as we use numbers to identify individuals, places, or things. The Khipu Database Project, for example, decoded that a particular three-number label at the beginning of some quipus may refer to Puruchuco, similar to a ZIP code.

Other aspects of a quipu could have communicated information as well: color-coding, relative placement of cords, spacing, and the structure of cords and sub-cords.

Literary uses
Some have argued that far more than numeric information is present and that quipus are a writing system. This would be an especially important discovery as there is no surviving record of written Quechua predating the Spanish invasion. Possible reasons for this apparent absence of a written language include destruction by the Spanish of all written records, or the successful concealment by the Inca peoples of those records. Making the matter even more complex, the Inca 'kept separate "khipu" for each province, on which a pendant string recorded the number of people belonging to each category.' This creates yet another step in the process of decryption in addition to the Spanish attempts at eradicating the system. Historians Edward Hyams and George Ordish believe quipus were recording devices, similar to musical notation, in that the notes on the page present basic information, and the performer would then bring those details to life.

In 2003, while checking the geometric signs that appear on drawings of Inca dresses from the First New Chronicle and Good Government, written by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala in 1615, William Burns Glynn found a pattern that seems to decipher some words from quipus by matching knots to colors of strings.

The August 12, 2005, edition of the journal Science includes a report titled "Khipu Accounting in Ancient Peru" by anthropologist Gary Urton and mathematician Carrie J. Brezine. Their work may represent the first identification of a quipu element for a non-numeric concept, a sequence of three figure-eight knots at the start of a quipu that seems to be a unique signifier. It could be a toponym for the city of Puruchuco (near Lima), or the name of the quipu keeper who made it, or its subject matter, or even a time designator.

Beynon-Davies considers quipus as a sign system and develops an interpretation of their physical structure in terms of the concept of a data system.

Khipu kamayuqkuna (knot makers/keepers, i.e., the former Inca record keepers) supplied colonial administrators with a variety and quantity of information pertaining to censuses, tribute, ritual and calendrical organization, genealogies, and other such matters from Inca times. Performing a number of statistical tests for quipu sample VA 42527, one study led by Alberto Sáez-Rodríguez discovered that the distribution and patterning of S- and Z-knots can organize the information system from a real star map of the Pleiades cluster.

Laura Minelli, a professor of pre-Columbian studies at the University of Bologna, has discovered something which she believed to be a seventeenth-century Jesuit manuscript that describes literary quipus, titled Historia et Rudimenta Linguae Piruanorum. This manuscript consists of nine folios with Spanish, Latin, and ciphered Italian texts. Owned by the family of Neapolitan historian Clara Miccinelli, the manuscript also includes a wool quipu fragment. Miccinelli believes that the text was written by two Italian Jesuit missionaries, Joan Antonio Cumis and Giovanni Anello Oliva, around 1610–1638, and Blas Valera, a mestizo Jesuit sometime before 1618. Along with the details of reading literary quipus, the documents also discuss the events and people of the Spanish conquest of Peru. According to Cumis, since so many quipus were burned by the Spanish, very few remained for him to analyze. As related in the manuscript, the word Pacha Kamaq, the Inca deity of earth and time, was used many times in these quipus, where the syllables were represented by symbols formed in the knots. Following the analysis of the use of "Pacha Kamaq", the manuscript offers a list of many words present in quipus. However, both Bruce Mannheim, the director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Michigan, and Colgate University's Gary Urton, question its origin and authenticity. These documents seem to be inspired freely by a 1751 writing of Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero.

Inca Empire (Tawantin Suyu)

Quipucamayocs (Quechua khipu kamayuq, "khipu-authority"), the accountants of Tawantin Suyu, created and deciphered the quipu knots. Quipucamayocs could carry out basic arithmetic operations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They kept track of mita, a form of taxation. The quipucamayocs also tracked the type of labor being performed, maintained a record of economic output, and ran a census that counted everyone from infants to "old blind men over 80". The system was also used to keep track of the calendar. According to Guaman Poma, quipucamayocs could "read" the quipus with their eyes closed.

Quipucamayocs were from a class of people, "males, fifty to sixty", and were not the only members of Inca society to use quipus. Inca historians used quipus when telling the Spanish about Tawantin Suyu history (whether they only recorded important numbers or actually contained the story itself is unknown). Members of the ruling class were usually taught to read quipus in the Inca equivalent of a university, the yachay wasi (literally, "house of teaching"), in the third year of schooling, for the higher classes who would eventually become the bureaucracy.

Spanish invasion
In 1532, the Spanish Empire's conquest of the Andean region began, with several Spanish conquerors making note of the existence of quipus in their written records about the invasion. The earliest known example comes from Hernando Pizarro, the brother of the Spanish military leader Francisco Pizarro, who recorded an encounter that he and his men had in 1533 as they traveled along the royal road from the highlands to the central coast. It was during this journey that they encountered several quipu keepers, later relating that these keepers "untied some of the knots which they had in the deposits section [of the khipu], and they [re-]tied them in another section [of the khipu]."

Christian officials of the Third Council of Lima banned and ordered the burning of some Quipus in 1583 because they were used to record offerings to non-Christian gods and were therefore considered idolatrous objects and an obstacle to religious conversion.

Contemporary social importance
The quipu system operated as both a method of calculation and social organization, regulating regional governance and land use. While evidence for the latter is still under the critical eye of scholars around the world, the very fact that they are kept to this day without any confirmed level of fluent literacy in the system is testament to its historical 'moral authority.' Today, "khipu" is regarded as a powerful symbol of heritage, only 'unfurled' and handled by 'pairs of [contemporary] dignitaries,' as the system and its 'construction embed' modern 'cultural knowledge.' Ceremonies in which they are 'curated, even though they can no longer be read,' is even further support for the case of societal honor and significance associated with the quipu. Even today, 'the knotted cords must be present and displayed when village officers leave or begin service, and draping the cords over the incoming office holders instantiates the moral and political authority of the past.' These examples are indicative of how the quipu system was not only fundamental mathematically and linguistically for the original Inca, but also for cultural preservation of the original empire's descendants.

Anthropologists and archaeologists carrying out research in Peru have highlighted two known cases where quipus have continued to be used by contemporary communities, albeit as ritual items seen as "communal patrimony" rather than as devices for recording information. The khipu system, being the useful method of social management it was for the Inca, is also a link to the Cuzco census, as it was one of the primary methods of population calculation. This also has allowed historians and anthropologists to understand both the census and the "decimal hierarchy" system the Inca used, and that they were actually 'initiated together,' due to the fact that they were 'conceptually so closely linked.'

Tupicocha, Peru
In 1994, the American cultural anthropologist Frank Salomon conducted a study in the Peruvian village of Tupicocha, where quipus are still an important part of the social life of the village. As of 1994, this was the only known village where quipus with a structure similar to pre-Columbian quipus were still used for official local government record-keeping and functions, although the villagers did not associate their quipus with Inca artifacts.

San Cristóbal de Rapaz, Peru
The villagers of San Cristóbal de Rapaz (known as Rapacinos), located in the Province of Oyón, keep a quipu in an old ceremonial building, the Kaha Wayi, that is itself surrounded by a walled architectural complex. Also within the complex is a disused communal storehouse, known as the Pasa Qullqa, which was formerly used to protect and redistribute the local crops, and some Rapacinos believe that the quipu was once a record of this process of collecting and redistributing food. The entire complex was important to the villagers, being "the seat of traditional control over land use, and the centre of communication with the deified mountains who control weather".

In 2004, the archaeologist Renata Peeters (of the UCL Institute of Archaeology in London) and the cultural anthropologist Frank Salomon (of the University of Wisconsin) undertook a project to conserve both the quipus in Rapaz and the building that it was in, due to their increasingly poor condition.

Archaeological investigation
In 1912 anthropologist Leslie Leland Locke published "The Ancient Quipu, A Peruvian Knot Record," American Anthropologist, New Series I4 (1912) 325–332. This was the first work to show how the Inca (Inka) Empire and its predecessor societies used the quipu (Khipu) for mathematical and accounting records in the decimal system.

The archaeologist Gary Urton noted in his 2003 book Signs of the Inka Khipu that he estimated "from my own studies and from the published works of other scholars that there are about 600 extant quipu in public and private collections around the world."

According to the Khipu Database Project undertaken by Harvard University professor Gary Urton and his colleague Carrie Brezine, 751 quipus have been reported to exist across the globe. Their whereabouts range from Europe to North and South America. Most are housed in museums outside of their native countries, but some reside in their native locations under the care of the descendants of those who made the knot records. A table of the largest collections is shown below.

While patrimonial quipu collections have not been accounted for in this database, their numbers are likely to be unknown. One prominent patrimonial collection held by the Rapazians of Rapaz, Peru, was recently researched by University of Wisconsin–Madison professor, Frank Salomon.

Preservation
Quipus are made of fibers, either spun and plied thread such as wool or hair from alpaca, llama, guanaco or vicuña, though are also commonly made of cellulose like cotton. The knotted strings of quipus were often made with an "elaborate system of knotted cords, dyed in various colors, the significance of which was known to the magistrates". Fading of color, natural or dyed, cannot be reversed, and may indicate further damage to the fibers. Colors can darken if damaged by dust or by certain dyes and mordants. Quipus have been found with adornments, such as animal shells, attached to the cords, and these non-textile materials may require additional preservation measures.

Quipus are now preserved using techniques that will minimise their future degradation. Museums, archives and special collections have adopted preservation guidelines from textile practices.

Environmental controls are used to monitor and control temperature, humidity and light exposure of storage areas. As with all textiles, cool, clean, dry and dark environments are most suitable. The heating, ventilating and air conditioning, or HVAC systems, of buildings that house quipu knot records are usually automatically regulated. Relative humidity should be 60% or lower, with low temperatures, as high temperatures can damage the fibres and make them brittle. Damp conditions and high humidity can damage protein-rich material. Textiles suffer damage from ultraviolet (UV) light, which can include fading and weakening of the fibrous material. When quipus are on display, their exposure to ambient conditions is usually minimized and closely monitored.

Damage can occur during storage. The more accessible the items are during storage, the greater the chance of early detection. Storing quipus horizontally on boards covered with a neutral pH paper (paper that is neither acid or alkaline) to prevent potential acid transfer is a preservation technique that extends the life of a collection. The fibers can be abraded by rubbing against each other or, for those attached to sticks or rods, by their own weight if held in an upright position. Extensive handling of quipus can also increase the risk of further damage.

Quipus are also closely monitored for mold, as well as insects and their larvae. As with all textiles, these are major problems. Fumigation may not be recommended for fiber textiles displaying mold or insect infestations, although it is common practice for ridding paper of mold and insects.

Conservators in the field of library science have the skills to handle a variety of situations. Even though some quipus have hundreds of cords, each cord should be assessed and treated individually. Quipu cords can be "mechanically cleaned with brushes, small tools and light vacuuming". Just as the application of fungicides is not recommended to rid quipus of mold, neither is the use of solvents to clean them.

Even when people have tried to preserve quipus, corrective care may still be required. If quipus are to be conserved close to their place of origin, local camelid or wool fibres in natural colors can be obtained and used to mend breaks and splits in the cords. Rosa Choque Gonzales and Rosalia Choque Gonzales, conservators from southern Peru, worked to conserve the Rapaz patrimonial quipus in the Andean village of Rapaz, Peru. These quipus had undergone repair in the past, so this conservator team used new local camelid and wool fibers to spin around the area under repair in a similar fashion to the earlier repairs found on the quipu.

When Gary Urton, professor of Anthropology at Harvard, was asked "Are they [quipus] fragile?", he answered, "some of them are, and you can't touch them – they would break or turn into dust. Many are quite well preserved, and you can actually study them without doing them any harm. Of course, any time you touch an ancient fabric like that, you're doing some damage, but these strings are generally quite durable."

Ruth Shady, a Peruvian archeologist, has discovered a quipu or perhaps proto-quipu believed to be around 5,000 years old in the coastal city of Caral. It was in quite good condition, with "brown cotton strings wound around thin sticks", along with "a series of offerings, including mysterious fiber balls of different sizes wrapped in 'nets' and pristine reed baskets. Piles of raw cotton – uncombed and containing seeds, though turned a dirty brown by the ages – and a ball of cotton thread" were also found preserved. The good condition of these articles can be attributed to the arid climate of Caral.

Fictional portrayals

 * The feature film Dora and the Lost City of Gold, which premiered in 2019, features a stone quipu which the title character Dora "reads" by touching to provide the protagonists a clue to finding the treasure at the climax of the story.
 * Chapter 9 of the book The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O’Brian features a message communicated using quipus.
 * The characters in the TV series See are blind, and so use strings with knots in them as a way to send messages.
 * The book The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland includes the use of quipus by witches as a means to navigate the complex algorithms of time travel.
 * The character Amelie prominently wears a quipu in the video game Death Stranding. The game also features a device heavily inspired by the Quipu, called the Q-Pid.
 * An episode in season 4 of the gag anime Teekyu features a quipu being used by Marimo to subdue a belligerent Tomarin.
 * In This Is How You Lose the Time War, one of the letters composed by "Blue" is hidden as a "knot code" in a crocheted cloth sample in pre-Columbian Peru.
 * In the book Ammonite (novel) by Nicola Griffith, the women of Jeep use knotted message cords, which are read by touch, to communicate over large distances.
 * In the television series Earth: Final Conflict, a quipu (and the Nazca Lines) is used as plot devices in the fifth episode of the third season.

Discovery of "Puruchuco" toponym

 * Experts 'decipher' Inca strings – BBC
 * – MSNBC
 * American Textile History Museum
 * American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works

Pismo węzełkowe

title: Quipu


text:
Thomas Frognall Dibdin

Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776 – 18 November 1847) was an English bibliographer, born in Calcutta to Thomas Dibdin, the sailor brother of the composer Charles Dibdin.

Dibdin was orphaned at a young age. His father died in 1778 while returning to England, and his mother died one of the following two years, and an elderly maternal aunt eventually assumed responsibility for Dibdin. He was educated at St John's College, Oxford, and studied for a time at Lincoln's Inn. After an unsuccessful attempt to obtain practice as a provincial counsel at Worcester, he was ordained a clergyman at the close of 1804, being appointed to a curacy at Kensington. It was not until 1823 that he received the living of Exning in Sussex. Soon afterwards he was appointed by Lord Liverpool to the rectory of St Mary's, Bryanston Square, which he held until his death.

The first of his numerous bibliographical works was his Introduction to the Knowledge of Editions of the Classics (1802), which brought him under the notice of the second Earl Spencer, to whom he owed much important aid in his bibliographical pursuits. The rich library at Althorp was thrown open to him; he spent much of his time in it, and in 1814–1815 published his Bibliotheca Spenceriana. As the library was not open to the general public, the information given in the Bibliotheca was found very useful, but since its author was unable even to read the characters in which the books he described were written, the work was marred by the errors which more or less characterize all his productions. This fault of inaccuracy however was less obtrusive in his series of playful, discursive works in the form of dialogues on his favourite subject, the first of which, Bibliomania (1809), was republished with large additions in 1811, and was very popular, passing through numerous editions.

To the same class belonged the Bibliographical Decameron, a larger work, which appeared in 1817. In 1810 he began the publication of a new and much extended edition of Ames's Typographical Antiquities. The first volume was a great success, but the publication was checked by the failure of the fourth volume, and was never completed. In 1818 Dibdin was commissioned by Earl Spencer to purchase books for him on the continent, an expedition described in his sumptuous Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany (1821). In 1822 Dibdin sold 'the entire collection of original drawings, executed by Lewis, and eminent artists, for the Bibliographical, Antiquarian, and Picturesque Tour, of the Rev. Mr. Dibdin' through London auctioneer R. H. Evans (sale 11–14 February 1822). A copy of the catalogue is in Cambridge University Library at the shelfmark Munby.c.124(9), annotated with prices; the total was £568 1s 6d.

In 1824 he made an ambitious venture in his Library Companion, or the Young Man's Guide and Old Man's Comfort in the Choice of a Library, intended to point out the best works in all departments of literature. His culture was not broad enough, however, to render him competent for the task, and the work was severely criticized. For some years Dibdin gave himself up chiefly to religious literature. He returned to bibliography in his Bibliophobia, or Remarks on the Present Depression in the State of Literature and the Book Trade (1832), and the same subject furnishes the main interest of his Reminiscences of a Literary Life (1836), and his Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and Scotland (1838).

Dibdin was the originator and vice-president—Earl Spencer being the president—of the Roxburghe Club, founded in 1812, the first "book club".

title: Thomas Frognall Dibdin


text:
Joseph Ames (author)

Joseph Ames (23 January 1689 – 7 October 1759) was an English bibliographer and antiquary. He purportedly wrote an account of printing in England from 1471 to 1600 entitled Typographical Antiquities (1749). It is uncertain whether he was by occupation a ship's chandler, a pattern-maker, a plane iron maker or an ironmonger. Though never educated beyond grammar school, he prospered in trade and amassed valuable collections of rare books and antiquities.

Life
He was the eldest child of John Ames, a master in the merchant service and sixth son of Captain Joseph Ames, R.N. Joseph Ames was born at Yarmouth on 23 January 1689 and was educated at a small grammar school in Wapping. He lost his father at age 12 and three years later was apprenticed to a plane maker in King Street or Queen Street, near the Guildhall, City of London. He then moved to Wapping near the Hermitage, where his father had previously settled, and established a successful business there. In 1712 his mother died and was buried in Wapping church near her husband. Two years later Ames married Mary, daughter of William Wrayford, a merchant in Bow Lane. She died in 1734 after bearing six children, of whom only a daughter survived her.

Ames was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1736 and was appointed secretary five years later; he held the position until his death, the Rev. William Norris being associated with him in 1754. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1743, but his only contribution to the Society's Philosophical Transactions was a letter relating to a case of plica polonica in 1747.

After dining with his old friend Sir Peter Thompson, Ames was seized with an attack that brought about his death that evening, 7 October 1759, in the seventy-first year of his life. He was buried in the churchyard of St George-in-the-East.

Reputation
Ames made no pretence to literary merit, and his position in the Society of Antiquaries generated a degree of antagonism. Edward Rowe Mores described him as 'an arrant blunderer' and accused him, with justification, of tearing out the title-pages of rare books in his collection. Among the works he is thought to have thus mutilated is the British Library copy of William Tyndale's 1526 New Testament, one of only two textually complete copies known. Francis Grose said that the history of printing published under his name actually was written by John Ward of Gresham College, though the materials probably were collected by Ames. William Cole thought he wrote like an illiterate and said he was an Independent by profession, but a deist in conversation. William Oldys (British Librarian, p. 374) acknowledges obligations to Ames, whom he styles 'a worthy preserver of antiquities.'

Collector
Ames assembled a large collection of portraits, especially those of printers, although many were of doubtful authenticity. He also collected coins, 'natural curiosities,’ inscriptions, antiquities and rare English books and manuscripts. Many of the books were annotated by former owners, and the manuscripts included a number of valuable historical transcripts. The collection was sold in 1760 after his death by Abraham Langford.

Among the collection was an interleaved copy of the Typographical Antiquities in two volumes, with manuscript additions. The lot, which included plates, blocks, and copyright, was purchased by Sir Peter Thompson and afterwards was sold by him to William Herbert, who made use of it for his own edition of the book (1785–1790). Another edition was by Thomas Frognall Dibdin (4 vols., 1810–1819).

Works
His works are: Ames owed his studious tastes to the Rev. John Russel of St John's, Wapping and the Rev. John Lewis. He also made the acquaintance, while attending lectures by John Theophilus Desaguliers, of Peter Thompson, a Hamburg merchant and Member of Parliament for St Albans. Lewis had made collections for a history of printing in England, and suggested to Ames that he should undertake the work. Notes sent to Ames include lists of printers and facsimiles of their marks, copies of title-pages, extracts, &c.
 * 'A Catalogue of English Printers, from the year 1471 to 1600, most of them at London, (without date or place), 4 pp.; the copy in the Society of Antiquaries Library is inscribed, 'Presented by Mr. Ames, 20 March 1739–40.'
 * 'An Index to the Pembrokian Coins and Medals' (without date or place, ?1746), 8 pp., with device. The volume of engravings of the cabinet of coins belonging to the Earl of Pembroke, Numismata Antiqua, was brought out in 1746 without any text. Ames printed for private distribution an index of four leaves, a transcript of the names of the coins as shown upon the plates.
 * 'A Catalogue of English Heads, or an account of about two thousand prints describing what is particular on each; as the name, title, or office of the person, the habit, posture, age or time when done, the name of the painter, graver, scraper, &c., and some remarkable particulars relating to their lives,’ London, 1748.
 * 'Typographical Antiquities, being an historical account of printing in England, with some memoirs of our antient printers, and a register of the books printed by them, from the year 1471 to 1600, with an appendix concerning printing in Scotland and Ireland to the same time,’ London, 1749.
 * 'Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, viz. of Matthew, bishop of Ely, Christopher, dean of Windsor, &c., but chiefly of Sir Christopher Wren, late surveyor-general of the royal buildings, P.R.S. &c., in which is contained, besides his works, a great number of original papers and records on religion, politics, anatomy, mathematics, architecture, antiquities, and most branches of polite literature, compiled by his son Christopher; now published by his grandson, Stephen Wren, Esq., with the care of Joseph Ames,’ London, 1750.

Samuel Palmer published a similar work; it appeared in 1732, but not to acclaim. In 1739–40 Ames circulated a preliminary list of English printers from 1471 to 1600, which included 215 names, most of them being those of London men, with the announcement: 'As the history and progress of printing in England, from 1474 to 1600, is in good forwardness for the press; if any gentleman please to send the publisher, Jos. Ames in Wappin, some account of these printers, or add others to them, or oblige him with what may be useful in this undertaking, the favour will be gratefully acknowledged.' In 1748[7] he printed a 'Catalogue of English Heads,’ being an index to the collection of 2,000 prints, bound in ten volumes, belonging to John Nickolls, F.R.S., the Quaker antiquary of Ware, Hertfordshire. It formed the first attempt at a general description of English engraved portraits, a work resumed by James Granger twenty years later.

In 1749, the Typographical Antiquities appeared, a quarto of over 600 pages, dedicated to Lord Chancellor Hardwicke. The original proposals contemplated only 200 copies, but 301 were subscribed for, and the list shows that the book was supported by leading antiquaries and printers. Ames owed much to the investigations of others. A portion of his extensive bibliographical correspondence with Andrew Ducarel, John Anstis, Lewis, Bishop Lyttleton, Rawlinson and others is given by John Nichols. The libraries of Lord Orford, Sir Hans Sloane, Anstis, and other friends, were used for his researches. Ames earned the gratitude of subsequent bibliographers by disregarding printed lists and consulting the title pages of the books themselves.

Parentalia (1750) was a memoir of the Wrens, undertaken in conjunction with Sir Christopher Wren's grandson, Stephen Wren. Part of his correspondence in bibliography is included in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes and Illustrations.

title: Joseph Ames (author)


text:
Charles Dibdin

Charles Dibdin (before 4 March 1745 – 25 July 1814) was an English composer, musician, dramatist, novelist, singer and actor. With over 600 songs to his name, for many of which he wrote both the lyrics and the music and performed them himself, he was in his time the most prolific English singer-songwriter. He is best known as the composer of "Tom Bowling", one of his many sea songs, which often features at the Last Night of the Proms. He also wrote about 30 dramatic pieces, including the operas The Waterman (1774) and The Quaker (1775), and several novels, memoirs and histories. His works were admired by Haydn and Beethoven.

Early life and early successes
The son of a silversmith, Dibdin was privately baptised on 4 March 1745 in Southampton and is often described as the youngest child of eighteen born to a 50-year-old mother. His parents, intending him for the clergy, sent Dibdin to Winchester College, but his love of music soon diverted his thoughts from the clerical profession. He possessed 'a remarkable good voice' at a young age and was in demand for concerts even as a boy. Anthems were composed for him by James Kent and his successor Peter Fussell, organists of Winchester Cathedral, where he was a chorister between 1756 and 1759. He went to London at the age of fifteen at his brother's invitation, and was first employed tuning harpsichords in a music warehouse in Cheapside. Through Mr. Berenger he was introduced to John Rich (of whom he became a favourite) and John Beard, and, growing addicted to theatre-going, he soon became a singing actor at Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. As his voice was not yet settled, Rich thought he would become a bass, and marked out the pantomime roles of Richard Leveridge for him. Dibdin held back from this path, but made the most of his introductions: when Rich died in 1761 and Beard succeeded him as manager and part-proprietor, fresh opportunities arose.

With Beard's encouragement Dibdin wrote his first work, both words and music of The Shepherd's Artifice, an operetta in two acts, which was produced as Dibdin's benefit at Covent Garden on 21 May 1762 and repeated in 1763. As an actor, Dibdin had constant opportunities to study Garrick's performances, and befriended his associates, notably his prompter, who could remember Cibber. He enjoyed two seasons touring at the Vauxhall in Birmingham, and another at Richmond. Beard exercised a benign and encouraging influence over Dibdin's early career, choosing him, in his first important appearance, for the part of Ralph, in the 1765 premiere of Samuel Arnold's opera The Maid of the Mill at Covent Garden. He gained so much success over a run of more than fifty nights, that 'Ralph' handkerchiefs were worn in compliment to him. He agreed to article himself, both as actor and musician, to Beard for three years at a salary rising from three to five pounds a week. However, his contract established a precedent by which actors were not paid in case of absence through sickness.

The script for The Maid of the Mill was by playwright Isaac Bickerstaffe, who had written the libretto for Love in a Village, the highly popular opera (called the first English comic opera) by Dr. Thomas Arne, produced in 1762. For Dibdin the next turning-point was in the 1767 premiere and short run of Bickerstaffe's Love in the City, in which he played Watty Cockney, and for which he produced a good deal of the music and airs. He had already confided to Beard that he disliked acting because of the jealousy and spite which his success brought upon him from other actors. Hence he had turned again to composition. But now some of the orchestra complained to Beard that his music was discreditable to the theatre: whereupon Dibdin obtained the direct intervention of Dr. Arne, who (according to Dibdin) pronounced that this was a scandalous attempt to ruin the reputation of a young man whom it was their duty to encourage and protect. Love in the City was abandoned, but Dibdin's music was successful and was transferred into a play called The Romp. The association with Bickerstaffe continued in Dibdin's music for the play Lionel and Clarissa at Covent Garden in 1767, the year of Beard's retirement.

Drury Lane with Garrick
By 1768, his articles completed, and receiving harsh treatment from his new manager George Colman, Dibdin was ready to part company with Covent Garden. Garrick, who had coached him a little at Richmond in the previous year, was eager to win over Bickerstaffe to Drury Lane: and as hopes for his new play The Padlock projected for the Haymarket Theatre faded, Garrick acquired it, and acquired Dibdin as composer, whose music for this work was, at Garrick's suggestion, given anonymously. Dibdin made only £40 from it while Bickerstaffe made a fortune. The Padlock was produced at Drury Lane under Garrick's management in 1768, Dibdin taking the part of Mungo (a blackface role ) so as to cause "that degree of sensation in the public which is called a rage."

In 1769 for Garrick (who had placed him under some financial obligation) he also composed for Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford, but found that Garrick had quietly substituted commissions to Arne and to Boyce. Garrick, it seemed, wished to control both Bickerstaffe and Dibdin, in case their work should find other patrons, and busied them both, inducing Dibdin to revise and write new music for Cibber's Damon and Phillida. In addition he provided the score for Bickerstaffe's burletta The Recruiting Serjeant, and for his The Maid the Mistress, and The Ephesian Matron in that year, which were all produced in 1769 at Ranelagh Gardens under a two-year contract with the Ranelagh managers for £100 per annum for whatever music he should supply them with.

Dibdin set a text by Garrick for The Installation of the Garter in 1771. In February 1773 the comic opera The Wedding Ring based on an Italian opera Il filosofo di campagna was brought out, but was almost withdrawn on the first night owing to the rumour that it was written by Bickerstaffe, who had fled to France, utterly ruined by the accusation of an 'abominable (i.e. homosexual) attempt'. Dibdin was obliged to appear on stage and claim authorship of both words and music, while salacious tittle-tattle (and worse) sought to embroil both him and Garrick in Bickerstaffe's offence. In November 1773, in a production of the musical drama The Deserter which he had adapted from the French opera of 1769 by Michel-Jean Sedaine and Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, he introduced the song 'There was a miller's daughter' and modified other songs without Garrick's knowledge or consent, but with great success. During the same year he worked closely with Garrick at Hampton to compose songs and music for Garrick's winter piece, The Christmas Tale. From this ordeal he acquired the technique of composing the music entire in his mind, writing down nothing until the finished manuscript was needed: to this method he afterwards adhered.

Meanwhile, from 1772 he was also engaged by Thomas King to write regularly for Sadler's Wells, and in that year produced songs for the Musical Dialogues The Palace of Mirth and Bickerstaffe's The Brickdustman. He followed that in 1773 with the interlude The Mischance, and the dialogues The Grenadier (text by Garrick), The Ladle, England against Italy, and None so blind as those who won't see: and furthermore in the same year he wrote songs for The Trip to Portsmouth (words by G. A. Stevens), performed by Charles Bannister at the Haymarket, for which the overture and dances were written by Thomas Arne.

Dibdin's most lasting opera, The Waterman, a comic opera, the music of which he sold for £30, was produced first at the Haymarket Theatre in 1774. His dialogues and songs for The Cobbler, or, A Wife of Ten Thousand (based on Sedaine's Blaise le savetier), were acted as a ballad opera at Drury Lane in 1774, and his famous short opera The Quaker was produced there on 3 May 1775, which Dibdin had sold to Brereton for £70, who sold it on to Garrick for a hundred. Charles Bannister was again prominent in the cast of all three operas. After being connected with Drury Lane both as composer and as actor for several years, a series of disagreements with Garrick, partly over Dibdin's desertion of his second partner Mrs Davenet and his children by her, led to the termination of his engagement.

Sadler's Wells, Haymarket and Covent Garden
Despite the rift with Garrick, Dibdin's output continued successfully. The dialogue The Imposter, or, All's not gold that glitters, was written for Sadler's Wells in 1776, and his comic opera The Metamorphosis modelled on Molière's Sicilian, but with songs and music his own, was performed at the Haymarket in the same year. His comic opera The Seraglio, incorporating the famous rondeau song 'Blow High, Blow Low' (written during a gale returning from Calais) was first acted at Covent Garden in November 1776. The productive season of 1777 included songs for The vineyard revels (a pantomime), She is mad for a husband, Yo, Yea, or, The friendly tars, The old woman of eighty and The razor grinder, all at Sadler's Wells. In 1778 the important burletta Poor Vulcan was produced at Covent Garden, but in Dibdin's absence in France many of the songs were altered by another hand. There also he wrote the libretto of The Gipsies, for which Thomas Arne wrote the music, first performed at the Haymarket in 1778.

On his return from France in 1778 Thomas Harris, the Theatre Manager, appointed him Musical Director at Covent Garden (to write exclusively for him) at the then huge salary of £10 a week. Attempting to introduce a taste for the French variety theatre, he had adapted six short interludes, with his own music, with a view that one should be introduced between the play and the farce usually presented on the same evening. They included Rose and Colin, Wives revenged and Annette and Lubin; but Harris instead lumped them together as an after-piece and Dibdin's subtler intention was thwarted. In the following January his speaking pantomime The Touchstone (with songs) was produced, but Mr Pilon, Mr Cumberland, Mrs Cowley and Mr Lee Lewis were permitted to alter it so much that it became almost unrecognisable. However, Dibdin did accept two clever emendations suggested by Garrick, which resulted in a reconciliation between the two men: it is claimed that Garrick's very last step upon the stage was during a rehearsal for The Touchstone a night or two before the opening.

Covent Garden productions continued with The Chelsea pensioners, and The Mirror, or, Harlequin everywhere (a pantomime) (both 1779), and in 1780 the comic opera The Shepherdess of the Alps, and the three-act opera The Islanders, most of which was re-presented as a two-act farce called The Marriage Act in 1781. After the British victory at the Siege of Savannah, he added a scene in The Mirror depicting British grenadiers (one of whom was played by Frederick Charles Reinhold) defeating the Comte d'Estaing, leader of the French forces during the battle, and then singing "The British Grenadiers." He also arranged, wrote and composed the 1780 Christmas pantomime, Harlequin freemason, for which Messink (Garrick's pantomime specialist) contributed the inventions. In 1781 Dibdin adapted John Dryden's play Amphytrion, or Juno and Alcmena into an opera. He attempted to rewrite it so as to avoid some of the impropriety of the original, and was at first encouraged by Harris, who later changed his mind. Dibdin was left with a difficult task and the result was not a popular success.

The Royal Circus and other ventures
There was then an argument between Dibdin and Harris over payment for the work, with the result that Dibdin instead embarked on a project to construct the Royal Circus, (afterwards known as the Surrey Theatre) for mixed entertainments of various kinds, he planning to form a combination of the stage and an equestrian ring or hippodrome. Several parties including the landowner advanced the funds and became proprietors, and Dibdin was appointed sole manager for life, to receive a quarter of the profits. Dibdin is credited with coining the term "circus".

Meanwhile, a dialogue, The Fortune Hunter, had appeared at Sadler's Wells in 1780, and at the Haymarket. Dibdin had contributed songs to an entertainment called Pasquin's Budget in which characters were represented by puppets, and their songs were performed by singers behind the scenes. It is said that in The Comic Mirror Dibdin had ridiculed prominent contemporary figures through the medium of a puppet show. Such things had been tried elsewhere, for instance at the Marylebone Gardens: but on the first night at the Haymarket 'the puppets were goosed off, and the manager made to apologise for the insult offered to the audience.' Nonetheless some of the songs, including Dibdin's 'Reasonable animals' and 'Pandora', became very popular, and Pandora was later acted at the Circus. Between 1782 and 1783 he engaged some sixty children to act as dancers and singers for his various lively productions at the Circus, for which he supplied many airs, pantomimes, intermezzi and ballets, under such titles as Clump and Cudden, The benevolent tar, The saloon, The talisman, The graces, Long odds, Tom Thumb, The Passions, The Lancashire witches, The Barrier of Parnassus, The Milkmaid, The Refusal of Harlequin, The Land of Simplicity, The Statue, The regions of Accomplishment, and Cestus (a kind of mythological burlesque in which the Homeric gods discoursed in a low vernacular). His opera Liberty Hall, containing the successful songs "Jock Ratlin", "The Highmettled Racer" and "The Bells of Aberdovey", was produced at the Drury Lane theatre on 8 February 1784.

After three years at the circus, in which Dibdin fell out with his partners and became entangled in litigation; in 1785, he withdrew, and, instead, entered into a speculation to build a theatre at St. Pancras. However, while under construction this was blown down during a storm, and the project had to be abandoned. He then came to an arrangement to supply the manager of the Dublin theatre with music at a cost of £600, of which he received only £140; at the same time he began publishing a weekly magazine, called The Devil, which failed after 21 issues. His last opera of this period was Harvest Home, a two-act comic opera first performed at the Haymarket in 1787.

Monodramatic entertainments at King Street and Leicester Place
In 1788, having dissolved his connection with the existing theatres and in financial straits, Dibdin considered moving to India. His eldest brother, Captain Thomas Dibdin, had formerly invited him to visit, but had since died, prompting Dibdin to write his greatest song, "Tom Bowling". He now hoped to be received by his brother's old friends, and perhaps to collect certain debts owing to him. Therefore, he made a tour of England to raise money by giving entertainments of songs and recitations, and he sold the musical compositions he had available at very unfavourable rates to the greedy publishers. He set sail for the East Indies in summer 1788, but the vessel was forced to put in at Torbay because of bad weather.

Dibdin then changed his mind and returned to London, resolving to put himself before the public rather than applying again to the theatres. Instead, building on what he had done in his tour, he commenced a new kind of one-man-show, musical variety entertainments, in which he appeared in his own person on the stage seated at a harpsichord and played the accompaniments to his own songs, without attempting any theatrical personification of his characters. The Whim of the Moment was such an entertainment consisting of recitations and songs, and played from October 1788 until the following April, during the whole of which time Dibdin was a prisoner in the King's Bench. This was first given at the Lyceum Theatre in The Strand, and afterwards at Fisher's or Stevens' Auction Room in King Street, in Covent Garden. For several years he also repeated the entertainments in the daytime at the Paul's Head Assembly Rooms in Cateaton Street.

His monodramatic entertainments continued after 1795 at a theatre which he built, the Sans Souci Theatre in Leicester Place. Dibdin introduced very many songs which gained wide popularity, including "Poor Jack," "'Twas in the good ship 'Rover'," "Saturday Night at Sea," and "I sailed from the Downs in the 'Nancy.'" His songs, music and recitations here finally established his fame as a lyric poet. He continued this form of entertainment for nearly twenty years, usually between October and April, in which time he produced eighteen entirely original three-act or three-part productions, as well as several one-act pieces on contemporary themes, or in which to re-introduce some of his popular songs. At Christmas-time or during the spring he commonly cut short the main production to make room for a revival of some items brought out in previous years. Dibdin states that in all these entertainments, he had only the words before him, never having written down the music which was, however, fully composed in his mind.

The three-act novelties of each season, or Entertainments Sans-Souci, and their sequels, were as follows:
 * The Whim of the Moment, or, Nature in Little – Auction rooms, King Street, Covent Garden.
 * The Oddities (1789) – Lyceum.
 * The Wags, or, The Camp of Pleasure (1790) – Lyceum.
 * Private Theatricals, or Nature in Nubibus (1791) – Royal Polygraphic Rooms, The Strand; followed by The Coalition, a compilation from the preceding.
 * The Quizzes, or, A Trip to Elysium (1792); followed by a compilation from all the preceding.
 * Castles in the Air (1793)
 * Great News, or, A Trip to the Antipodes (1794) – followed by an Ode in honour of the royal marriage.
 * The Will o' the Wisp (1795) – followed by Christmas Gambols
 * The General Election (1796) – the first production at Dibdin's new Theatre Sans Souci; followed by Datchet mead, in honour of the marriage of the Princess Royal.
 * The Sphinx (1797); followed by a Christmas piece The Goose and the Gridiron.
 * The Tour to the Land's End (1798); followed by King and Queen (one act).
 * Tom Wilkins (1799).
 * The Cake-house (1800).
 * A Frisk (1801).
 * Most Votes (1802).
 * Britons, Strike Home (1803). This included a series of war-songs with military-band accompaniments.
 * In 1804 there was a one-act novelty Valentine's Day, and three compilations of older pieces, namely The Election (from Most Votes); The Frolic (from Britons, Strike Home); and, A trip to the Coast.
 * Heads and Tails (1805); followed by Cecilia, or the Progress of Industry.
 * Professional Volunteers (1808). (Given at the Lyceum during Lent, supported by professional assistants, though still, after 48 years before the public, playing his own accompaniments).
 * The Rent-day, or, The Yeoman's Friend (1808) – Sans-Pareil Theatre (later the Adelphi Theatre) in the Strand.
 * Commodore Pennant (1809) – the last of these entertainments, a slight piece, was given in a room in the author's shop in the Strand.

John Adolphus, writing of Dibdin's involvement in the entertainment Bannister's Budget, wrote: "Charles Dibdin, year after year... had been giving delight and, for a time, acquiring great emolument, by means of entertainments under different names, in which he not only pleased but instructed the public; advancing the cause of morals by natural and energetic sentiments, and raising the flame of patriotism and loyalty by songs and speeches, just in conception and illustration, and impressive on the memory and the judgement by vivid imagery and pointed expression. His sea-songs form a class by themselves: they are calculated alike to cheer solitude and to animate social assemblages, to raise the laugh and the tear, and to engrave on the heart benevolence, courage, and a trust in Providence." Charles's son Thomas Dibdin, a close associate of John Bannister, wrote that "Charles Bannister, and his exemplary son John, were two of [Dibdin's] most intimate friends."

An impression of Dibdin
The author of his memoir, who witnessed one of Dibdin's Entertainments Sans Souci when a lad, offers the following picture: 'Dibdin was then a handsome man, of middle size, with an open pleasing countenance, and a very gentlemanlike appearance and address. His costume was a blue coat, white waistcoat, and black silk breeches and stockings; and he wore his hair, in the fashion of the day, fully dressed and profusely powdered. His manner of speaking was easy and colloquial; and his air was more that of a person entertaining a party of friends in a private drawing-room, than of a performer exhibiting to a public audience. He was near-sighted; and, when seated at his instrument, he would bend his head close to his book for a few moments, and then, laying it down, throw himself back in his chair, and deliver his song without further reference to book or music. His voice was a baryton (a medium between the tenor and the bass) of no great power or compass, but of a sweet and mellow quality. He sang with simplicity, without any attempt at ambitious ornament, but with a great deal of taste and expression; and, being a poet as well as a musician, he was particularly attentive to a clear and emphatic utterance of the words... In singing, he accompanied himself with facility and neatness, on an instrument of a peculiar kind, combining the properties of the pianoforte and the chamber organ, and so constructed that the performer could produce the tones of either instrument separately, or of both in combination. To this instrument were attached a set of bells, a side drum, a tambourine, and a gong, which he could bring into play by various mechanical contrivances, so as to give a pleasing variety to his accompaniments.'

'His manner of coming upon the stage was in a happy style; he ran on sprightly and with nearly a laughing face, like a friend who enters hastily to impart to you some good news.'

War songs and later years
Dibdin's patriotic sea songs and their melodious refrains powerfully influenced the national spirit and were officially appropriated to the use of the British navy during the war with France. They were not shanties or working songs, but a form of distinctively English ballad combining the tonality of the hornpipe with vivid if sentimentalized depictions of the comradeship, the separations from love, the simple patriotism, loyalty and manly courage of Tom, England's Jack Tar. In 1803 he was induced by Pitt's government, with a pension of £200 a year, to abandon provincial engagements to compose and sing 'War Songs' to keep up the ferment of popular feeling against France. This was withdrawn for a time under the administration of Lord Grenville, but afterwards partly restored.

Dibdin still provided texts for operas, including The Cabinet, which was presented at Covent Garden in February 1803 with John Braham, Nancy Storace and Charles Incledon, and in December The British Fleet in 1342. At least two further operas appeared: Broken Gold was a farce in two acts on the occasion of Lord Nelson's victory and death, produced at Drury Lane with John Bannister in 1806, which was 'damned on the first night, and never published'. His last production, The Round Robin, was first acted at the Haymarket in June 1811. This incorporated his highly successful song 'The standing toast,' which had been written some time before.

During this period, in 1805, he sold Sans Souci and opened a music shop in the Strand (opposite the Lyceum), but the venture was a failure and he was declared bankrupt. He retired from public life in 1805, disposing of his stock (including the copyright of 360 songs) to a firm in Oxford Street for £1,800, with £100 a year for the next three years in consideration of whatever songs he might write. He took up residence in Arlington Road in Camden Town, where he suffered a paralytic stroke in 1813 after which the government granted him a pension of £200. In 1810 a subscription dinner and concert was held for his benefit. This raised £640, of which £560 was invested in long annuities for himself and his family. He died on 25 July 1814 in comparative poverty, and was buried in St Martin's churchyard there. His widow placed a stone over his grave inscribed with a quatrain from "Tom Bowling".

Other writings
Besides his Musical Tour through England (1788), his Professional Life, an autobiography published in 4 volumes in 1803, a Complete History of the British Stage (5 vols, 1795), Observations on a Tour through England and Scotland (2 vols, 1803) and several smaller works, he wrote upwards of 1400 songs and about thirty dramatic pieces. He also wrote the following novels: The Devil (2 vols, 1785); Hannah Hewitt (3 vols, 1792); The Younger Brother (3 vols, 1793) and Henry Hooka (3 vols, 1806). An edition of his songs by G. Hogarth (1843) contains a memoir of his life.

Allusions in music and literature
The tune of "Tom Bowling" forms part of Sir Henry Wood's 1905 Fantasia on British Sea Songs customarily played on the Last Night of the Proms. Verdant Green, eponymous hero of the novel by Cuthbert Bede, learns to row and 'feathers his oars with skill and dexterity' (Part II Chapter VI), borrowing a line from Dibdin's song "The Jolly Young Waterman." The great Victorian baritone Sir Charles Santley made his farewell performance at Covent Garden in 1911 in the role of Tom Tug in Dibdin's opera The Waterman. And in James Joyce's story "Eveline" (from Dubliners), Frank 'sang about the lass that loves a sailor' from the song of the same name (also called 'The standing toast') by Dibdin.

Just before his marriage, James Boswell wrote a song, "A Matrimonial Thought" which was given a tune "by the very ingenious Mr. Dibden." In the blithe days of honey-moon, With Kathe's allurements smitten, I lov'd her late, I lov'd her soon And I called her dearest kitten. But now my kitten's grown a cat, And cross like other wives, O! by my soul, my honest Mat, I fear she has nine lives.

Family
Dibdin had married early in life, but deserted his first wife and left her destitute. He then formed an illicit connection with Harriett Pitt (stage name Mrs. Davenet), a chorus-singer at Covent Garden Theatre, and had some children by her. In time he deserted Harriet in favour of Ann Wyld, with whom he remained and had several further children during his wife's lifetime, and finally married Wyld in 1798 after his first wife died. She and only one daughter of that union survived him.

Dibdin's two sons with Harriet − Charles and Thomas John Dibdin, whose works are often confused with those of their father − were also popular dramatists in their day. Through his son Thomas, Dibdin was an ancestor of the British politician Michael Heseltine.

He was also the uncle of the bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin.

Public memorials

Seven years after his death a subscription to raise a monument to Dibdin was set in train under the patronage of the Duke of Clarence and Admiral Sir George York. At a public dinner and concert a large sum was raised, but insufficient to complete the project. A second grand musical entertainment, The Feast of Neptune, raised a further £400 and the monument was eventually raised in the Veterans' Library at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, which is now the Peacock Room, part of the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

British politician Michael Heseltine is a distant descendant of Dibdin, having 'Dibdin' as one of his middle names. He is a fan of Dibdin's works, and was responsible for the government's erection of a statue of Dibdin in Greenwich.

On the west face of the tower of Holyrood Church in Southampton is a memorial plaque to Dibdin, where he is described as a "native of Southampton, poet, dramatist and composer, author of Tom Bowling, Poor Jack and other sea songs".

In 1889 a Celtic cross memorial was erected, by public subscription, in St Martin's Gardens, Camden Town, after his original tomb collapsed. A verse from "Tom Bowling" is inscribed upon it:
 * His form was of the manliest beauty,
 * His heart was kind and soft,
 * Faithful, below, he did his duty;
 * But now he's gone aloft.

Also in Camden, in Joseph Grimaldi Park a grave-style musical memorial for Dibdin is placed next to one for Joseph Grimaldi.

Recordings
Three recent discs of Dibdin's music have been recorded and released by Retrospect Opera. The first, which appeared in 2017, comprises Christmas Gambols and The Musical Tour of Mr Dibdin. The second, released in 2019, includes Dibdin's The Jubilee, Queen Mab and Datchet Mead. The third, "The Wags", was released in late 2021. All feature the singer Simon Butteriss and the keyboardist Stephen Higgins. The Jubilee also features the singers Soraya Mafi, Robert Murray and Heather Shipp.

A previous disc featuring Dibdin's The Ephesian Matron, The Brickdust Man and The Grenadier, conducted by Peter Holman, was released on the Hyperion label in 1992. There have also been many recordings of Dibdin’s most famous song, Tom Bowling.

title: Charles Dibdin


text:
Thomas John Dibdin

Thomas John Dibdin (21 March 1771 – 16 September 1841) was an English dramatist and songwriter.

Life
Dibdin was the son of Charles Dibdin, a songwriter and theatre manager, and of "Mrs Davenet", an actress whose real name was Harriett Pitt. He was introduced to the stage at five years old, in his godfather David Garrick’s pageant of ‘’Jubilee of Shakespeare’’. Mrs Siddons was The Venus and the Young Tom Cupid. He was apprenticed to his maternal uncle, a London upholsterer, and later to William Rawlins, afterwards sheriff of London. He summoned his second master unsuccessfully for rough treatment; and after a few years of service he ran away to join a company of country players. From 1789 to 1795 he played all sorts of parts; he worked as a scene painter at Liverpool in 1791; and during this period he composed more than 1,000 songs.

His first work as a dramatist was Something New, followed by The Mad Guardian in 1795. He returned to London in 1795, having married two years before; and in the winter of 1798–99 The Jew and the Doctor was produced at Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. From this time he contributed a very large number of comedies, operas, farces, etc., to the public entertainment, including (in 1802) the comic opera Family Quarrels. Some of these brought immense popularity to the writer and immense profits to the theatres. It is stated that the pantomime of Mother Goose (1807) produced more than £20,000 for the management at Covent Garden theatre, and the High-mettled Racer, adapted as a pantomime from his father's play, £18,000 at Astley's.

Dibdin was prompter and pantomime writer at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane until 1816, when he took over the Surrey Theatre. This venture proved disastrous, and he became bankrupt. After this, he was manager of the Haymarket Theatre, but without his old success, and his last years were passed in comparative poverty. In 1827 he published two volumes of Reminiscences; and at the time of his death he was preparing an edition of his father's sea songs, for which a small sum was allowed him weekly by the Lords of the Admiralty. Of his own songs, "The Oak Table" and "The Snug Little Island" were popular at the time. He died leaving a widow (second wife) and young family.

Charles Dickens quotes from Dibdin's patriotic song "The Snug Little Island" in Little Dorrit: Daddy Neptune one day to Freedom did say, "If ever I lived upon dry land. The spot I should hit on would be little Britain!" Says Freedom, "Why that's my own island!" Oh, it's a snug little island! A right little, tight little island, Search the globe round, none can be found So happy as this little island. The song was published posthumously in 1841 in the Addenda (containing songs of T. Dibdin) to Songs of the Late Charles Dibdin, a collection arranged by Thomas Dibdin with sketches by George Cruikshank. A copy was found in Dickens's library after his death.

Family
Dibdin married Nancy Hilliar in 1793. Their granddaughter Eve Mary Dibdin married the tea salesman William Heseltine and was the grandmother of the British politician Michael Heseltine.

Selected works

 * The Mouth of the Nile (1798)
 * Five Thousand a Year (1799), play
 * The Birth Day (1799)
 * The School for Prejudice (1801)
 * Guilty or Not Guilty (1804)
 * The Will for the Deed (1804)
 * Five Miles Off (1806)
 * Errors Excepted (1807)
 * The Secret Mine, 1812 play
 * The Ninth Statue 1814
 * Zuma
 * The Lily of St. Leonards 1819
 * The Ruffian Boy, 1820 adapted from Mrs. Opie, and The Fate of Calas

title: Thomas John Dibdin