£150
18mo, pp. 88, 36. Contemporary quarter red roan, marbled boards. Somewhat spotted and foxed, binding strained, some leaves partly sprung. Rubbed, worn to extremities, some loss to foot of spine. Ownership inscription to inside front board: ‘Isabella Dukes Book’.
A seemingly-unrecorded songbook, produced by and for an Edinburgh singing teacher. Gray's Annual Directories between 1832 and 1838 record an R.B. Stewart as a teacher of music at 53 Cumberland Street in Edinburgh, likely our compiler, and the lack of printed music along with the occasional editorial comment (eg. 'The Melody to this Song is very pleasing, and very easy; it is very well adapted to the words' (p. 29)) suggest an intended audience of his pupils and his pupils alone, with no booksellers or gestures to commerce in the imprint. Most of the songs included are unsigned, although it attributes Bonnie Nannie to Hogg and Logan Streams to Burns. It is preceded in this slim volume by a larger, Paisley-printed songbook in a similar vein, also very scarce, with an 1830 printing at Oxford the only record in Library Hub; Worldcat adds nothing further. This Paisley songbook also contains a recension of Logan Streams, which it attributes to Mayne.
