Old Ballads, from early printed copies of the utmost rarity. Now for the first time collected. Edited by J. Payne Collier, Esq. F.S.A.

About this book

8vo. pp. xi, [1] (blank), 131. Half morocco. Contained in the first volumes of a set of the Society’s first forty-five publications, 1840-1844 (Percy Society. Early English poetry, ballads, and popular literature of the Middle Ages. Edited from original manuscripts and scarce publications. 12 volumes). The present work, an edition of 25 old ballads, drew principally on Collier’s transcripts of Heber’s broadsides. The edition contain few lapses in editorial honesty, although Collier made up an imprint for ‘The Maner of the World Now a Dayes.’ See A. & J. Freeman, John Payne Collier. Scholarship and Forgery in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven, 2004, I, pp. 333-334; II, A32. Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.