‘To Complete the Romance of the Scene’: Three Previously Unknown Manuscripts of Guitar-Accompanied Song from the Nineteenth Century

Abstract It no longer seems eccentric to suggest that the guitar merits a place in any balanced account of British musical life during the nineteenth century. This article concerns three previously unknown manuscript guitar books of that period, discovered serendipitously in bookshops or auction catalogues. None has ever figured in an institutional collection or bibliographical record hitherto. After a succinct introductory account, which surveys the books in relation to aspects of guitar history that are still largely unknown to most modern players of the ‘classical’ guitar (and are usually overlooked by many scholars of nineteenth-century music in general), there is an inventory of all three. Of particular interest is the range of places where these manuscripts were copied or used, which include Trincomalee in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Jabalpur in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, as well as Kempsey in Worcestershire and Dover in Kent. British guitar history in the nineteenth century has a global context that encompasses distant corners of the Empire.