The Tea-Table Miscellany

The first ever edition of The Tea-Table Miscellany, a seminal collection in defining eighteenth-century Scottish song, is now available. It provides comprehensive antecedents for almost all the songs, a unique survey of early sources for the tunes, and detailed collation of texts against all extant manuscript sources and relevant printed editions. Annotations offer new insights into Ramsay's cultural, historical, political, literary, and theatrical contexts.

Format: Hardback
Length: 872 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2023
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

The Tea-Table Miscellany, a seminal collection in defining eighteenth-century Scottish song, is the subject of a detailed examination in this edition. It provides comprehensive antecedents for almost all the songs, making it a critical contribution to the establishment of a Scottish song tradition.

The book is uniquely comprehensive in its survey of early sources for the tunes of Ramsay's songs. It conducts a detailed collation of texts against all extant manuscript sources and relevant printed editions, accompanied by comprehensive explanatory annotations that offer new insights into Ramsay's cultural, historical, political, literary, and theatrical contexts.

This edition of The Tea-Table Miscellany is the first ever produced, bringing together the four volumes of this collection of songs published between 1723 and 1737. The Tea-Table Miscellany combines traditional Scottish song, works by Allan Ramsay and his contemporaries, with material from D Urfey, Playford, and the English stage and broadside, in a collection of 399 songs.

The edition offers annotations, background, and a study of origins for all the songs and tunes. It examines Ramsay's categorization of the authorship and origin of the song texts and tunes to which he was most likely referring. This includes a detailed introduction, clearly presented song texts, notes on the songs that identify their print and musical antecedents, musical illustrations that show major variations in the contemporary tunes with which the songs are associated, illustrations of the title pages, and the main design features and ornaments used in Ruddiman's original edition.

The Tea-Table Miscellany is a valuable resource for scholars and music enthusiasts interested in eighteenth-century Scottish song and its cultural and historical contexts. Its detailed examination of the musical archaeology and comprehensive annotations provide new insights into Ramsay's songs and their place in the broader Scottish musical tradition.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474499231