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The Words of the favourite Pieces as performed at the Glee Club held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, compiled from their Library …

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Very rare enlarged edition, adding an ‘Appendix’ (pp. 85–114), with the words to 45 new songs; the final page of the index is a cancel, adding the new contents. ESTC records only the original printing of 1794 (paginated [4], 85, [7]). An inscription here dates the Appendix, printed by Smeeton, to 1800. It was presumably compiled for the use of members who had memorised the music.

The glee flourished in England from around 1750, inspired by the rediscovery of the English madrigal. The Glee Club was founded informally in 1783, and meetings were held first at various private houses before its official institution in 1787 – its professional membership included the pre-eminent composers of the glee, Samuel Webbe and John Wall Callcott, and the tenor (and compiler of the present work) John Paul Hobler, who also performed in concerts of the Academy of Ancient Music and the Handel concerts at Westminster Abbey. In 1791 it removed to the newly rebuilt Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, a venue that had earlier hosted the Academy of Ancient Music and the première of Handel’s Esther in 1732. Meetings opened with Webbe’s ‘Glorious Apollo’, the first item here, ‘written and composed expressly for the club’, and the society welcomed to its meetings Samuel Wesley, Moscheles, and Mendelssohn. It was dissolved in 1857 and its library (from which Hobler compiled this work) sold. Most of the songs printed here are by members (Webbe, Callcott, Dyne), but earlier works by composers such as Hilton, Wilbye, Este, Weelkes, and Ravenscroft are also found.

Edmund Ferrers (1772–1825), rector of Cheriton and author of Illustrations of Hogarth (1816), was presumably a member of the Club and has annotated his copy, adding ‘The original words of the fairy glee’, the authors of many texts (which are listed by the composer’s name only), and cross references in the index: ‘The numbers answer to my books’.

Not in ESTC, but we have traced copies with the Appendix at Cambridge and the London Library. 

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