By Peter Snape
222pp.
£15.00 (+£3.20 p+p). For overseas postage please contact us before paying
ISBN 878-1-0686406-6-7
Anne Geddes Gilchrist, OBE, FSA (1863–1954) was one of the major folk song collectors of the ‘first revival’. A remarkable woman, self-effacing, independent, and widely respected among her peers, she was the only collector who focused on her home region of Lancashire and the North-West, before turning her attention to the study of folk song.
With an incredible gift for memory and a seemingly endless knowledge of the history of English and Scottish tunes – traditional and sacred, and from broadside, manuscript, and early printed sources – she became a beacon of the folk song and dance movement and willingly encouraged others undertaking similar work in both England and America. She was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1933, and was awarded the Gold Badge of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 1939, and an OBE for services to folk music in 1948.
This book is book is the first of its kind, written with the intention of gaining greater recognition for Anne Gilchrist alongside the other main players in the movement. She is integral to the history of folk song in England and in her home county of Lancashire. Anne Geddes Gilchrist: Folk Song Scholar and Collector is an account of a life devoted to folk song and music, and includes reprints of a selection of her published articles, along with twenty-eight of the songs she collected.
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