ESSAYS ON SONG WRITING Attributed to JOHN AIKIN 1st Edition 1772 with a collection of English Songs.

ESSAYS ON SONG WRITING 

280 pages. 

The very scarce first edition of Aikin's contribution to eighteenth-century song theory. The book was initially published anonymously, as was a number of Aikin's early literary and political efforts. Aikin (1747-1822) was a physician who practiced successfully for a number of years until a stroke forced his retirement. Thereafter he devoted himself to literature and related pursuits, along with his numerous friends such as Priestley, the naturalist Pennant, Erasmus Darwin, and the philanthropist John Howard, for whom he acted as literary executor.

The compiler of these songs said that the idea for this work came about when a group of friends were bemoaning the lack of good music at that time. They discussed it and Aikin decided to gather "good" songs, these came mostly from the past and from the time of Charles II to the end of Anne's reign. 

This work is usually attributed to John Aikin (1747 - 1822), a physician and author of various political and biographical works. The genesis of this book came, Aikin says in his Preface, when he and various friends lamented the absence of a good collection of the excellent songs in which song-writing was taken seriously as an art form: "The chief sources of good songs, are the miscellany poems and plays from the time of Charles the second to the conclusion of Queen Ann's reign." He was working in London in 1769-70 and moved to Warrington in 1771, and he might have made the acquaintance of the radical publisher, Johnson, during his brief sojourn in London. His political leanings were liberal, and Johnson published his An Address to the Dissidents of England on their Late Defeat (1790).