ABSTRACT
Between 1793 and the mid-1840s Edinburgh music publisher George Thomson edited numerous volumes of Scottish, Welsh and Irish folk songs with new lyrics by over 80 contemporary literary men and women, including most importantly Robert Burns, and with new musical arrangements by Pleyel, Kozeluch, Haydn, Beethoven, Carl Maria von Weber and Hummel. Thomson was obsessed from the beginning of his publishing venture with high standards of presentation: the aesthetics of his product relied equally upon its artistic content and its visual beauty. From the outset he wanted to produce top-quality, sophisticated and elegant volumes. Thomson chose to present himself on his title pages, from the first sets of Scottish airs in the 1790s, as ‘proprietor’ of his publications, but he never appeared as their publisher. Thomson’s original intention was to produce only two sets (that is, books) of Scottish songs in the 1790s.
