C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set

Subject: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: GUEST,OldNicKilby
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 05:37 AM

The 2 vol set of Cecil Sharpes Folk Songs of England are on U K E Bay. These are about as rare as honest politicians. Sorry can't do the blue clicky

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Paul Davenport
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 06:56 AM

Definitely worth the chase...great source of songs and other material.

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 10:11 AM

Great stuff - but, alas, not for me at £140..

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: nager
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 06:31 PM

For a dreadful moment I thought this was another thread like "No such thing as a B-sharp"

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Rozza
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 07:10 PM

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Cecil-Sharps-Collection-English-Folk-Songs-Vol-1-2-/220763477261?pt=Non_Fiction&hash=item336687550d#ht_500

This might be the link if I do the blue clicky thing right!

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 10:40 PM

You could do worse:-

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3257287901 (from New Zealand, £187)

or worse still:-

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3148943876 (from Enniskillen, NI, £220 for Volume 1 - same seller has Volume 2 at the same price)

or push the boat out:-

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3338279447&xbf=b3MtcWctdWJ6cg__%2F98774651183264047567&afn_sr=para¶_l=0 (from Maryland, USA, £640)

Does the eBay offer still look like a poor deal? Good luck with the bidding. (I have no connection to the seller!)(And no, I haven't held back any cheaper offers for myself - couldn't find any).

Ross

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 12:47 AM

You'd think the Sharp books would be good candidates for reissue, but I haven't seen any information about the possibility of reissue. Seems like real classics like these should be available to everyone, anytime.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: GUEST,Folkiedave
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 03:29 AM

I haven't looked at these for a while - but speaking as a book dealer specialising in folk material - at £140.00 they are at a good price.

As for re-printing Joe - I doubt it will happen. Just a personal opinion of course.

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: DMcG
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 07:13 AM

Presumably this is something else entirely?

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: GUEST,OldNicKilby
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 07:39 AM

Very much so, not in the same league. This set(The Sharp ) really is the canine gonads. I searched for mine for the best part of 12 or 15 year sand spent nearly £250 on it 12 years ago and then a friend got an ex library set for a Fiver.Hey Ho thats life.

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 07:47 AM

I bought mine 2nd hand donkey's years ago for thirty five quid. Allowing for inflation that must be somewhere around the price being asked on Ebay. IMO this is one set no serious enthusiast of folksong should ever be without.

I know some of us are badgering Camsco to publish the Lloyd biography, should the Pluto Press deal fall through. However, if the thing is that hard to come by, perhaps Dick could honour us by republishing the Sharp as well.

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: GUEST,SteveG
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 04:58 PM

Much more useful in my opinion is the 2 vol set by Maud Karpeles 'Cecil Sharp English Folk Song Collection' which reproduces different versions and fragments as well as the fuller songs. Fairly scarce but I got my set for much less than the prohibitive prices being bandied here. From what I've seen the 2 Sharp vols mentioned here are just as bowdlerised and sanitised as his other publications.
The bawdy material is not in Karpeles, but the whole lot is due online from the original mss anyway shortly.

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 05:05 PM

Sorry folks. I thought it was the Karpeles edition we were talking about. That's the set I've got, and that's the set Rozza identified on http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Cecil-Sharps-Collection-English-Folk-Songs-Vol-1-2-/220763477261?pt=Non_Fiction&hash=item336687550d#ht_500 .

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Apr 11 - 05:59 PM

What would it cost to buy rights to [legally] post some of these classic books on the Internet?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 04:36 PM

Both my copies are ex-library but I can't find an ISBN anywhere. They are published by OUP 1974 so I doubt you'd get permission to publish them online.

The 2 Cecil Sharp books originally mentioned may be out of copyright as they were published around 1920. They were very expensive and very nicely bound. The last time I saw a set of these they were in a sale from the Hudleston collection at Tenants, Leyburn, and they went for some ridiculous figure.

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 05:07 PM

Hi, Steve -
My question is, why couldn't I get permission to publish them online? - if I paid for rights to publish them.

It would seem to me that many of the classic song collections have little commercial value; so rights to publish them online should be cheap, if we could figure out a way to arrange for rights. Why not?

I'm still hoping that Google Books will get rights to release full views of out-of-print books, and that might solve our problem. It seems a shame to me that so many classic folk music books are unavailable to the general public, and it seems that there should be something that can be done to resolve that unavailability. I know Google has gotten bad press lately on their Google Books experiment, but I applaud them for their efforts to make books available to the general public. If they can find a way to make money off that access and also compensate the copyright holders, more power to them.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 11:11 AM

The "Oxford Book of Sea Songs" was long out of print and had become a hard-to-find item when the original editor, Roy Palmer, managed to get it re-edited (with additional material) and re-issued as "Boxing the Compass" (David Herron Publishing, 2001). As in the case of the Bronson re-prints, it takes an enthusiastic individual and a co-operative publisher to recognize the potential and to carry a project through. I have a letter from David Eckersley (publisher of "Boxing the Compass"), which came with Ron Baxter's presentation copy, now under my guardianship, where David looks forward to many years of sales for the new edition. His and Roy Palmer's confidence in the material are bourne out by the results - the book is still available from Waterstones and Blackwell's (and the Chantey Cabin) ten years on.

I can see more difficulty for classic collections like Bronson, Child, Greig/Duncan and the various Sharp works because much of the market for reference works like these would normally be taken up by libraries. In these days of cutbacks, institutions are less likely to refresh editions they already possess, leaving the uptake to private individuals. (Not so many people, not so deep pockets).

There's an interesting list (slightly out-of-date now) on David Eckersley's Chapbook Page at the South Riding Folk Network site:-

http://www.folk-network.com/newsletter/features/daveherrons.html

If you have the Sharp volumes of the original post on your eBay Watch List, clicking on the "View Similar Items" line in the "More Actions" drop-down menu will produce a fascinating list.

Joe, another way of making material available (at a price) is on-demand publishing. I recently bought a copy of Sam Henry's "Songs of the People" (University of Georgia Press, ISBN-13: 978-0-8203-3625-1,ISBN-10: 0-8203-3625-4) collection for not much more than the remaindered price I paid for my original copy - as far as I can tell, apart from updated info and review comments on the back cover,they look exactly the same:-

http://www.amazon.com/Sam-Henrys-Songs-People-Henry/dp/0820336254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302446296&sr=8-1

Ross

Subject: RE: C Sharp Folk Songs of England 2 vol set
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 10 Apr 11 - 03:58 PM

Joe,
I'm not trying to discourage your commendable efforts. There's some amazing stuff out there online already thanks to google books, various universities, Gutenberg project. One of our TSF members, Lewis Jones, is constantly on the lookout for stuff available online, which he posts to our TRADSONG list. I'm only guessing that OUP would want a lot to place two substantial volumes like this online. On the other hand, as I've already said, it's pointless anyway because the original mss are due online on the EFDSS website very shortly.