Category Archive: Bookseller

‘We Three Kings of Orient are’ has always been a crowd-pleaser (and a magnet for children who enjoy changing the words). An American carol, it first appeared on p. 12 of John Henry Hopkins‘s Carols, Hymns, and Songs (New York, Church Book Depository, [1863]): ‘Hopkins was rector of Christ’s Church, Williamsport, Pennsylvania, when he published […]

It’s Election Day in the UK and, as luck would have it, we have a political Christmas carol here in the office! According to Fuld, the music of ‘God rest you merry gentlemen’ ‘is said to have been in a broadside printed … about 1796, but no copy of the broadside has been found.  The […]

Continuing our Christmas carol countdown, it’s ‘The first Noel’! The first appearance of ‘The first Noel’ (without music) was in the second edition of Davies Gilbert‘s Some ancient Christmas Carols, with the Tunes to which they were formerly sung in the West of England (London, John Nichols and Son, 1823): In this second, expanded edition, ‘there […]

Last night, BBC Four broadcast a programme with Lucy Worsley revealing the surprising stories behind some of the nation’s favourite Christmas carols. ‘Hark! the Herald Angels sing’ got a mention, so we thought we would feature it ourselves today. As we wrote yesterday on the blog, the carol was included, along with the first appearance […]

Today, we feature the carol ‘Lo! he comes, with clouds descending’, which first appeared in A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes never published before (London, ‘To be had at the Lock Hospital near Hyde Park Corner, and of E. Dilly’, 1769).  Charles Wesley’s classic Advent hymn, which dates from the 1750s, received its tune […]

Yesterday, we featured a carol that first appeared in The English Hymnal (1906). Today is the turn of another beloved carol which appeared for the first time in that book: ‘O little town of Bethlehem’. This carol owes its origin to the folk song revival of the early twentieth century, which is often twinned with […]