An Analytical Index to the Ballad-Entries (1557-1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London

Tradition Press, Hatboro, 1967 reprint of 1924 first edition. Cloth, 8vo,. xv, [1], 324 pp. From the introduction: "Hardly anything is more fascinating than to pick up a volume of the printed Transcripts of the Stationers' Registers and to skim through the pages to see what our forefathers read.. During the first twenty or thirty years in which the Registers were kept, ballads indeed made up the bulk of the entries; until 1640 they occupied perhaps greater space than books or plays. But from 1640 to 1655, thanks to civil war and restrictive laws, almost no ballads were registered at Stationers' Hall. A similar gap appears from 1656 (when some 165 ballads were entered) to 1675 (when some 175 were entered); and from 1676 to 1708/9 - the date at which the Registers were discontinued - ballad-entries were rarely made. It has long amused me to skim through these entries and to attempt to identify them. The results ..are now presented in the form of an index to all the ballad-entries made at Stationers' Hall during the years 1557-1709. The difficulty of arranging the index has been increased by the obvious necessity of serving two distinct purposes: (1) to enable the student who has the printed Transcripts before him immediately to find in my index a reference to the title he is consulting; (2) to enable the student who has a ballad before him to find out whether the ballad was registered and, if so, to refer him directly to the volume of the Transcript in which the registration is made. As a result, I have been forced to provide three indexes, the last two of which supplement, and as a matter of fact actually index, the first index. Minor marks to covers , otherwise Near Very Good.