The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London
The heyday and decline of those who sang in the city streets in order to sell printed songs.
- 2021
- Cambridge University Press
His study boldly combines meticulous scholarship with an invigorating imagination, its structure echoing the patterning of the ballads themselves. Oskar Cox Jensen’s is one of the most exciting new voices in cultural history.
— Professor Jacky Bratton, RHUL
For three centuries, ballad-singers thrived at the heart of life in London. One of history’s great paradoxes, they were routinely disparaged and persecuted, living on the margins, yet playing a central part in the social, cultural, and political life of the nation. This history spans the Georgian heyday and Victorian decline of those who sang in the city streets in order to sell printed songs.
Focusing on the people who plied this musical trade, Oskar Cox Jensen interrogates their craft and their repertoire, the challenges they faced and the great changes in which they were caught up. From orphans to veterans, prostitutes to preachers, ballad-singers sang of love and loss, the soil and the sea, mediating the events of the day to an audience of hundreds of thousands. Complemented by sixty-two recorded songs, this study demonstrates how ballad-singers are figures of central importance in the cultural, social, and political processes of continuity, contestation, and change across the nineteenth-century world.
A major advance in scholarship on the history of this ephemeral yet remarkably robust literary form.
— Professor Katharine Craik, TLS
For three centuries, ballad-singers thrived at the heart of life in London. One of history’s great paradoxes, they were routinely disparaged and persecuted, living on the margins, yet playing a central part in the social, cultural, and political life of the nation. This history spans the Georgian heyday and Victorian decline of those who sang in the city streets in order to sell printed songs.
Focusing on the people who plied this musical trade, Oskar Cox Jensen interrogates their craft and their repertoire, the challenges they faced and the great changes in which they were caught up. From orphans to veterans, prostitutes to preachers, ballad-singers sang of love and loss, the soil and the sea, mediating the events of the day to an audience of hundreds of thousands. Complemented by sixty-two recorded songs, this study demonstrates how ballad-singers are figures of central importance in the cultural, social, and political processes of continuity, contestation, and change across the nineteenth-century world.
The depth of research and painstaking scrutiny of sources in The Ballad-Singer will make Cox Jensen’s new book the go-to reference on this topic for some considerable time.
— Professor Ian Haywood, Modern Philology
Oskar Cox Jensen has written a fascinating and insightful book on a subject that has been poorly served by serious scholarship ... It is essential reading for anyone who wants to enhance and stimulate their knowledge and understanding of popular music.
— Vic Gammon, Popular Music
Elegantly written and erudite, Jensen’s book resonates with his deep engagement with the songs, sounds and presence of late Georgian and early Victorian street singers ... an exemplary account.
— Professor Brian Maidment, Cultural and Social History
Cox Jensen identifies an astonishing range of sources of information and it is unlikely anyone will ever do better ... this book is essential reading and a good solid grounding on which all future work will be built.
— Steve Roud, Folk Music Journal
Oskar Cox Jensen is currently one of the most insightful and prolific scholars of the ballad.
— Robin Ganev, Journal of British Studies
There are many books about the British ballad, but this one is different. It's about the men, women and children whose voices made ballads happen. Often despised, frequently ridiculed, these hardy performers now have a champion ... both richly researched and deeply moving.
— Professor Roger Parker, King’s College London
