Amazon.com description: Product Description: The extensive journals of the English gentleman composer John Marsh, which cover the period from 1752-1828, represent one the most important musical and social documents of the period to have hitherto remained unpublished. Drawing on the recently discovered original (Now in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California), the selection covers the first fifty years of Marsh's life, a period of intense musical activity in the southern cathedral cities of Salisbury, Canterbury and Chichester. But Marsh was far more than a provincial composer and music director; the journals also cast much valuable light on musical life in London-his account of the great Handel Commemoration of 1784 is without parallel for its colorful evocation of the huge event. A lively interest in a wide range of topics gives the journals a scope rare in the writings of a musician and the volume will be of indispensable value not only to the musical but also thesocial historian. The unfailingly vital and often witty writing also ensures considerable appeal to the more general reader with an interest in an eventful period of English history.

The volume has been comprehensively annotated and includes illustrations and contemporary maps in addition to the first complete published listing of Marsh's compositions and writings.

For those interested in the repertoire of 18th-century music making the volume is perhaps one of the most important sources available... Ian Graham-Jones Early Music Review no. 47, February 1999

Brian Robins has...rescued a worthy musician from obscurity and given us a most edifying, entertaining and enjoyable book. Richard Turbet BRIO Volume 36

...no-one interested in eighteenth-century music can afford to be without it. Peter Hoffman in Goldberg Early Music Magazine

This volume is, in every sense of the word, a monumental achievement for which anyone interested in English social life and/or music in the second half of the eighteenth century must be profoundly grateful. H. Diack Johnstone in Journal of the Royal Musical Association.

From time to time a major new source comes to light with the potential to transform radically our understanding of the life and times of the author. ... It is no exaggeration to claim such significance for the journals of John Marsh. Rachel Cowgill