The first complete edition, second issue of volumes I-V with titles altered to the familiar Wit and Mirth from Songs Compleat, 1719 (a change at the time of the publication in 1720 of volume VI, which is always entitled Wit and Mirth).

The origins of Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, the most famous song book of its day, may be traced back to a single volume of ‘witty ballads, jovial songs, and merry catches’ by an earlier generation of lyricists, published without music in 1661 under the title An Antidote against Melancholy: made up in Pills. For the third edition, still without music but livened up by more recent songs, the title was changed to Wit and Mirth: An Antidote against Melancholy (1682), and in 1699, still in one volume, it was published by Henry Playford with music. Over the course of the next two decades it was expanded and republished again and again, eventually to become this six-volume definitive edition of contemporary popular comic and bawdy ballads, with an increasing emphasis on the work of the stammering dramatist and lyricist Thomas D’Urfey, whose songs were sung by all the town. Among the composers were Dr. John Blow and Henry Purcell.

Day and Murrie 236-240, & 242.

You may also be interested in...

DECADE-DEFINING DECADENCE
‘TO BE APPRECIATED ONLY BY THE DILETTANTE’ BEARDSLEY, Aubrey, art editor; Henry HARLAND, literary editor. 

The Yellow Book.  An Illustrated Quarterly.  Volume I [– XIII]. 

An excellent set of the first edition of The Yellow Book, the decade-defining illustrated quarterly that captured the spirit of decadence and aestheticism and gave its name to ‘the yellow nineties’. 

Read more

A PRIG'S COPY OF A BUM'S BOOK THOMAS, Dylan.

Under Milk Wood. A Play for Voices …

First edition, first impression, our copy from the library of BBC radio producer D.G. Bridson, with a loosely inserted stereotype letter from the poet John Berryman about the last days and the death of Dylan Thomas.

Read more