ABSTRACT
The history of the drawing-room ballad lies in Bourgeois having written the words to a collection of songs entitled Peninsular Melodies, published by Goulding & D'Almaine, London. The moral fervour of Cook's poetry may have dated towards the end of her life, but she had proved well before then that women could rival men in providing verse for drawing-room ballads. Another woman ballad composer who began to make her reputation in the 1850s was Dolores, or Elizabeth Dickson (1819-78). The opening up of the ballad market to women composers in the 1860s probably owed most to the exceptional commercial success of Claribel's ballads. In Claribel's day verse and refrain form was by no means the norm; in fact, Claribel did much to make it the norm, since she used it more than other composers at this time.
