Description
Farmer, John S. edit.(pseudonym for E.O. Wolcott). Merry Songs and Ballads prior to the year AD 1800. Privately printed for Subscribers only. National Ballad and Song 1897 5 vols. Leather covers, ribbed spines Some have cracked hinges. Volume three has a 1.5 ” tear to the leather at the hinge. Vol 5 has damage to spine. Vol 5 cover detached but present. Needs a bookbinder’s tender mercies. Quarto 280, 267, 286, 287, 269 pp
” It has often been observed that the only connection between scholars and dollars is the rhyme. Farmer’s was an outstanding case of utter devotion to a valuable and quixotic work, struggling and staggering for decades under the encumbrance of crippling penury. No connection with the university world in which scholarly publication has always been a patronized activity so long as it stays safe and polite. A sort of allowed self-advertising by means of which instructors slowly become professors, on the unwritten law of ‘Publish or perish!’ – Framer would under ordinary circumstances, have had recourse to commercial publishers. He however, made up his mind to produce linguistic and folkloristic works absolutely unexpurgated during the notably prudish late Victorian age, which is not yet over by any means so far as scholarly publication is concerned…”